Saying Yes
by starfishstar
Summary: At 17, Andromeda Black thought being in love was everything. At 57, Andromeda Tonks knew better. Yet the first time Kingsley Shacklebolt asked her out, she surprised herself by saying yes.
1. Chapter 1

Note: This story has 15 chapters, all quite short – and all complete. But I do love posting serially on the rare occasions when I write something longer than one chapter... so I'll be posting a chapter every day or two! (Story also post to my account at AO3.)

– – – – –

_Now, so many brilliant writers to thank. (The site won't let me post links, but hopefully you can find these stories if you want to!)  
_

**JKR**, the one and only.

**gm_weasley** started it all, with the tiniest suggestion of this pairing in the beautiful "Variations on a Happily Ever After," best described with its own summary: "All was eventually well, but it took nineteen years to get there."

**sundancekid**'s "September when it comes" is a fantastic portrait of Teddy over the years. And, now I think about it, the sixth of the Septembers in that story may well have inspired some of the events in Chapter 11 of this story.

With permission, I've used **Fernwithy**'s inspired choice of name for Kingsley's son, from the delightful "Teddy Lupin and the Forest Guard." The name was so perfect, in fact, that I had to let my version of Kingsley have children just so I could use it.

**Rosemaryandrue**'s wonderful "Rising Storm" universe unquestionably influenced how I see the characters of Andromeda and Ted during the years of the first war.

And Molly running a home school for pre-Hogwarts-aged kids comes from **Sam Starbuck (aka Copperbadge)**'s fantastic "Stealing Harry" series.

– – – – –

**CHAPTER ONE**

At 17, Andromeda Black thought being in love was everything. At 57, Andromeda Tonks knew better.

She knew nothing would ever equal the passion for Ted that had swept her off her feet and given her the strength to leave behind everyone she loved. And she knew love wasn't enough to keep the world from being pulled out from under your feet.

So the first time Kingsley Shacklebolt asked her out, what Andromeda found herself answering was, "You should know I don't plan to marry again."

He graced her with one of his slow, gentle smiles with just a hint of amusement at the edges and said, "Likely as not neither do I, so let's just start with the original question. Can I take you to dinner sometime?"

His rumbling laugh was so honest and infectious, Andromeda couldn't help smiling back.

Then she surprised herself by saying yes.

– – – – –

That first dinner, Andromeda found it hard to concentrate. It was simply too strange to be on a date again after all these years.

Not that she'd even dated much in the first place – there hadn't been much time for it before she'd left home, eloped, and moved in with Ted. No, nothing about their early years together had particularly followed tradition.

Kingsley reached over and touched her hand lightly with his, recalling her to the present.

"Andromeda," he said. "Perhaps it was a mistake to ask you out so formally. I was just hoping for a chance to get to know you a bit, outside of work. Tell me something about Teddy – he's in his second year at Hogwarts, is that right?"

That was all he had to ask. Andromeda felt her need to maintain a degree of formality with Kingsley, who was a colleague after all, slipping away.

"Yes, in his second year," she said. "I suppose Harry talked about him sometimes, when you worked together?"

"Ceaselessly," Kingsley grinned. "I've never known a prouder godfather."

"Well," said Andromeda, trying to suppress a smile of her own, "he _is_ a rather extraordinary godson, of course."

From there, it seemed natural to tell Kingsley about Teddy's academic achievements – regular praise from his Potions and Transfiguration professors in particular, and he seemed to have a sure hand with Herbology and Care of Magical Creatures as well – and about the friends and adventures that filled his letters home.

Andromeda wondered if she was boring Kingsley with her endless talk of Teddy, but the smile on the man's face suggested otherwise.

"What about your children?" she asked. "Are they at Hogwarts yet?"

Kingsley shook his head. "Stor starts next year."

Yes, it appeared she was out to dinner with a man who, though only two years younger than her himself if she recalled correctly, had a son likewise two years younger than her own grandson. Well, she'd started quite early and he'd started quite late, and what was the use in dwelling on such things?

Considering Kingsley Shacklebolt had been such a public figure for the last decade, Andromeda knew surprisingly little about his private life.

He'd married soon after becoming Minister for Magic, she knew that much, to an American witch high up in the Department of Magic. They'd had two children but separated soon after, with his ex-wife returning to the States and Minister Shacklebolt settling easily into the role of divorcé father. That was as much as Andromeda knew.

Exchanging stories of their children carried them through the evening and Andromeda was amazed when she pulled out her pocket watch and discovered it had grown late. She couldn't remember the last time she'd had such a nice evening, though she was careful not to place too much weight on that sentiment.

"I had a lovely evening," she told Kingsley, as they said good night outside the restaurant.

"So did I," he replied easily. "Perhaps we can do it again sometime."

Andromeda nodded her assent, and was nearly home before she realised she'd just agreed to a second date.

But Kingsley proved a prudent man in this, as in so many things. He didn't push too much or ask too soon, though they saw each other quite frequently on the days when the Wizengamot met, and often exchanged a few friendly words during breaks.

One day, he asked if she'd like to join him for a quick lunch between sessions, and it seemed natural to agree, just as it seemed natural that the man who had until recently been Minister was now simply a colleague.

As his second term had neared its end, many within the magical community had wanted to see Kingsley stay on as Minister, but he insisted on the two-term limit he himself had put in place, and instead stepped gracefully sideways into a seat on the Wizengamot.

In her far distant past, Andromeda had worked as an administrative assistant to the Wizengamot – that was before she'd got fed up with the wizarding world's seeming inability ever to change. She'd left the Ministry in frustration when Nymphadora was still fairly young.

Decades later, when Kingsley's post-war restructuring made the Wizengamot an elected body and acquaintances began urging Andromeda to stand for office, she at first found the idea absurd, then began to think it rather made sense. Serving on the Wizengamot was a part-time position that left her time to care for Teddy, and Andromeda certainly had some opinions about wizarding law.

The work turned out to be more rewarding that she'd expected, and it was a pleasure to watch the Wizengamot, that bastion of the old and respectable, be slowly but surely taken over by a new generation, one that didn't give a fig about the old ways. Andromeda had seen more progress in the last ten years than she'd expected to see in her lifetime.

And now, just as unexpected, Andromeda found herself being courted by one very persistent ex-Auror. Kingsley, unsurprisingly, proved to be a determined man.

Every couple weeks or so he would ask her to lunch or dinner, or simply for a stroll. One time, once the weather had taken a turn for the better in the late spring, he actually convinced her to attend a Quidditch match, which Andromeda found more tolerable than usual thanks to his amusing commentary.

"Did you enjoy the match?" Kingsley asked afterward, when they stopped for a glass of wine in a nearby café before each heading home.

"Yes, I did," Andromeda said, and was startled to realise it was true.

– – – – –

Meeting Teddy off the Hogwarts Express in June, Andromeda indulged in all the embarrassments her grandmother's prerogative allowed, planting a kiss on top of his head that made him squirm in front of his friends, then holding him out at arm's length to observe that, once again, he'd been growing at an astounding rate.

Andromeda had just the time to plant another kiss on top of his mop of hair, which seemed to be subtly shifting colours in his excitement to be home, before she found herself ceding her turn as all three Potter children raced up, shrieking, "Teddy!" and all tried to clamber onto the boy at once.

Harry and Ginny appeared just behind them, slightly out of breath, but greeting Andromeda warmly. Harry shot her an apologetic smile and nodded toward the children. "I'm not sure we'll ever get them disentangled now," he said, as James tugged on Teddy's arm and tripped over his own tongue in his haste to tell Teddy something about a fort he'd built in the Potters' garden.

"Then there's nothing else for it," Andromeda said. "You'll all have to come over for dinner."

"We wouldn't want to impose –" Ginny began, as Harry protested, "Andromeda, we couldn't –"

"Harry Potter," Andromeda said, pleased to find that her "stern" voice had not lost any of its effectiveness for want of use in the months Teddy had been away. "I must have cooked half the meals you ate during your entire time in Auror training, and now you choose to go polite on me? Just come to dinner, and bring your family."

"Yes, ma'am," Harry said meekly, and Ginny laughed at him.

"Thanks, then, Andromeda, we'd love to," Ginny added. She called, "Kids, did you hear that? You don't have to let your Teddy go, we're going to dinner with him." Andromeda couldn't help wincing as the children shrieked with delight. Teddy grinned.

Later, Harry insisted on doing the washing-up, so Andromeda stood with Ginny by the patio door, watching Teddy, James, Al and Lily tearing round the garden in the falling dusk.

"How do you stand it when they go away to school?" Ginny murmured. "I always think that's so far off, but it isn't, really. How does anyone stand it when they leave?"

Andromeda turned to study the young woman beside her. Maybe it was a sign of her own advanced age, but felt like only a year or two since Ginny had been 16, clumsy and endearing in her desire to help with Teddy whenever she came along with Harry to visit.

"When you find out, do let me know," Andromeda said, and Ginny smiled.

Actually, Andromeda was surprised how easily life fell back into its normal rhythm this time. The Potters came by often, and if they weren't there, Teddy was generally at their place. Or they were all together at the Burrow, because there was nothing Molly liked better than an excuse to bring together as many of her family and friends as possible.

Andromeda saw less of Kingsley, now that Teddy was home – not that they saw one another all that often to begin with, since he also had two young children and his evenings out had always been contingent on when he could find someone to look after them.

Still, she saw Kingsley on Wizengamot days, and here and there they managed to grab a quick lunch together, catching each other up on their small daily stories and their children's adventures.

She told him about Teddy helping Lily catch glow worms in the Potters' garden and about his school friends coming over to play pick-up Quidditch.

In exchange, Kingsley told her about Em's first encounter with garden gnomes and Stor's jitters about starting Hogwarts next year. Each time they met, she noticed, he knew exactly how many days it was until the children left for their yearly visit with their mother.

Andromeda made sure to take him out to lunch that day, hoping to provide a bit of distraction after he'd seen his children off on the morning Portkey to Washington. She was both amused and touched by how dejected he looked.

"However will you manage once they're both at Hogwarts?" she couldn't help asking him, over salads at their favourite café for workday lunches.

She was thinking of the first time she'd seen Teddy onto the Hogwarts Express, knowing she wouldn't set eyes on him again until Christmas. Or, for that matter, the first time she'd done the same with Nymphadora.

"Then at least I'll have regular owls," Kingsley answered mournfully. "They haven't yet found one that can cross the Atlantic in one go."

That was likely the moment when Andromeda realised that, yes, she could come to quite care for this man.

– – – – –

(to be continued…)


	2. Chapter 2

They were both at Platform 9 ¾ on September the first that year.

Andromeda looked up from adjusting a strap on Teddy's trunk to see Kingsley coming toward her, shepherding two children. It was the first time she'd set eyes on Alastor and Emmeline in person, although Kingsley was always happy to show off their photographs.

Alastor looked wide-eyed and anxious, though Andromeda assumed that could be put down to start-of-term nerves. Emmeline was giggling over something.

"Morning, Andromeda," Kingsley said jovially, every inch the professional acquaintances they were when in public together. She appreciated that about him.

"Good morning, Kingsley," she said, and for all her intentions to maintain a decorous public relationship, she couldn't help smiling at him a little more softly than she'd quite meant to. "This must be Alastor? And Emmeline?"

"Kids, this is my colleague Andromeda Tonks," Kingsley told them.

"How do you do, Mrs Tonks," Alastor said, reaching out to shake her hand in a very grown-up fashion, and Emmeline repeated dreamily after him.

"And Teddy, you know who Mr Shacklebolt is," Andromeda said. "This is my grandson, Teddy," she told Kingsley's son and daughter. "He's starting his third year."

Looking at Teddy next to anxious little Alastor, she was struck again by just how grown-up and confident he was.

"That's right!" Teddy said cheerfully. "I'm in Ravenclaw." He considered Alastor. "You're starting this year?"

"Uh-huh," Alastor said.

"Well, you can sit with me on the train, if you want," Teddy offered. "I'm gonna meet a bunch of my mates and we've got an Exploding Snap tournament we've been waiting to start up again since June, you can play too, if you want. Hey, maybe you'll be in Ravenclaw!" Alastor's eyes went wider. Teddy turned to Kingsley and declared, "Don't worry, Mr Shacklebolt. I'll look after him."

Kingsley grinned, and muttered something that sounded suspiciously like, "Comes by the take-charge attitude honestly, then."

Andromeda shook her head and smiled and told Teddy, "Go on, then, I know you want to find your friends and get a good seat on the train. I'll help you with your trunk."

"I'll do it," Kingsley said, and before Andromeda could protest, he was lifting Teddy's trunk into the nearest wagon, Alastor's joining it shortly afterward.

Andromeda kissed Teddy on both his cheeks, then on the top of his head for good measure – goodness, he'd grown yet again – and made him promise to write. Kingsley enfolded his son in his arms, then the whistle sounded and everywhere around them children were scrambling onto the train. The doors clanged shut and the train began to move.

Emmeline ran after the train as it belched steam and began to pick up speed, waving to her brother until the train was moving too fast and she had to fall behind. She turned at the end of the platform and looked back at her father, her mouth falling into an O of surprise as if she'd only just that moment realised her brother really had left.

She started back down the platform slowly, chin quivering just a little, and Kingsley hurried to meet her. "I think this is a day that calls for ice-cream sundaes, Em, don't you?" he asked. Emmeline nodded, just barely, and Kingsley turned to Andromeda. "Mrs Tonks? Care to join us?"

Andromeda started to decline, then remembered that the only other thing she had to do that day was sit at home and miss Teddy, so she said, "Yes, thank you, I'd love to." To her surprise, Emmeline slipped her other hand into Andromeda's as the three of them walked together out of the station and into the bright sun.

"Diagon Alley?" Kingsley asked. "New Fortescue's? I'm thinking maybe the super triple raspberry with chocolate sauce and singing sprinkles?"

Emmeline gave a watery nod.

Kingsley nodded back at his daughter sagely. "All right, that's settled for me then, but Em, what will _you_ have?"

Emmeline giggled, and Andromeda actually laughed.

– – – – –

There was a dinner that autumn, attended by much of the old Order of the Phoenix as well as several more progressive members of the Wizengamot, to honour the passage of a last major post-war revision, long-awaited, to wizarding law.

Thirteen years on, young Hermione Weasley had marched her way through house-elf legislation, non-discrimination toward werewolves, rights for all Beings and Beasts, and legal codification of Muggle protection, to arrive at the last bastion of her assault: inheritance law.

Female as well as male children could now inherit, property passing automatically to the eldest unless the parents' will stipulated otherwise. When Andromeda saw Harry at the dinner that evening, he tried to use the new law as grounds to argue yet again that 12 Grimmauld Place should rightfully belong to Andromeda rather than him, but that was silly, and Andromeda told him so.

"Really, Harry, what would I even do with that old place?" she asked, when he opened his mouth again to protest. "Keep it, with my blessing."

He looked ready to start arguing again, so she directed him gently toward his seat at the long table they'd reserved at a restaurant just off Diagon Alley, and went to find her own place. As she made her way around the table, Andromeda passed Kingsley's Emmeline, sweetly reading a picture book to little Lily in one corner. Near them, Harry's older two, James and Al, appeared to be having some sort of strange wrestling match that involved their toy wands but no hands.

Rose and Hugo, the two small children Hermione had managed to raise while working her way up through the Ministry and conducting her own private studies of wizarding law on the side, were playing happily under the table.

As she passed, Andromeda overheard Hermione saying to Ginny, "Honestly, I can't believe it's taken this long." Hermione radiated energy. "Thirteen years! When it's all so simple, really, once you just track down and compile the right precedents…"

Personally, Andromeda couldn't believe how much Hermione had accomplished in such a short space of time, whatever the younger woman might think. There was certainly a way in which Hermione reminded Andromeda of herself at a much younger age, when she'd still believed she had the power to make change.

But where Andromeda had grown fed up with the glacial pace of change in the wizarding world and let her anger drive her out of the Ministry, Hermione hadn't given up – and she'd achieved the seemingly impossible. Andromeda hoped Hermione held onto that determination for a long time yet.

Reaching her place at the table, Andromeda found that Kingsley had somehow contrived to be seated next to her. And as Hermione stood to say a few words of thanks to the assembled witches and wizards, Kingsley's hand found Andromeda's under the table. She flushed first with surprise, then pleasure, then turned surreptitiously to see his eyes sparkling at her with amusement.

"You know you're half the reason this law passed," Kingsley said, as Hermione sat down and the first course was served.

"I'm sorry?" Andromeda replied, bewildered.

"Well, you don't have to apologise for it, though some eldest male children in pure-blood families might wish you would," he grinned, and released her hand so they could both pick up their forks. "Hermione's been telling me how much of the legal legwork you did on this. Said she never would have had a case if you hadn't shown her where to look for the precedents. I don't pretend to have followed everything she explained to me, but it sounded quite impressive, how she said it. She looks up to you, you know."

"I – Hermione – me?" Andromeda fumbled, at a rare loss for words.

Kingsley smiled again. "Indeed. You, Hermione, you. You're an impressive woman, Andromeda."

Before Andromeda could think what to answer him, they were distracted by a series of small bangs. Little Rose Weasley, at that age where she was just starting to come into her magic, had accidentally set her entire place setting alight, and her father Ron was dousing Rose and everything around her with water from his wand.

"Easy there, she's a five-year-old, not a dragon," Harry teased Ron, who was now trying to siphon away the puddle he'd created on the table, while Hermione rolled her eyes.

Andromeda smiled, watching Molly scoop up her soaking wet granddaughter, both of them laughing now Rose was over the initial shock.

Over dessert and under the cover of the general chatter, Kingsley murmured in Andromeda's ear, "Em has a sleepover at a friend's place this weekend and I'll be rattling round the house alone. Could I convince you to come over and let me cook for you?"

Andromeda looked at Kingsley in surprise, and his eyes on her were uncharacteristically earnest.

"Yes, all right," she said. "I mean, yes, of course. I'd like that very much."

Kingsley relaxed and smiled.

That Saturday, Kingsley cooked a lovely meal for her at his house, which turned out to be a surprisingly modest little place on the outskirts of London. And before Andromeda left at the end of the evening, he kissed her, and he was such a gentleman about it that it very nearly didn't feel strange at all.

A few weeks after, she invited him to her house in turn – and let him stay the night.

No, Andromeda Tonks had not expected to embark on a romance at the age of 58. But then, neither had she expected Kingsley Shacklebolt.

Gradually, she learned to take initiative, inviting him out as well, or calling him by Floo when she felt like talking. And he was wonderful to talk to, funny and sympathetic and very intelligent. It surprised her how quickly she grew accustomed to sharing nearly everything with Kingsley.

"You know, you never talk about Tonks – Nymphadora, I mean. Or about Ted," Kingsley said one night.

They were together in her bed; it was one of the rare times when Emmeline was at a friend's house for the night, and Teddy and Alastor were not yet home for the summer. Andromeda had her hand resting on Kingsley's strong chest, just lying there quietly and marvelling at the simple fact that he was there.

But now Kingsley glanced over, in the half-light. "I don't mean that you have to," he said. "Only that I want you to know I don't mind if you do. I know the people we love don't cease to be part of us just because they've passed away."

Andromeda gazed back at him, wishing there were a way to express with a look how touched she was by the sentiment. She didn't know quite what to say.

"And in return," he said, "I'm glad to tell you anything you'd like to know about Cynthia, although I can't promise it's all that exciting a story."

Andromeda propped herself up on one elbow. "Actually…yes," she said. "I think I'd like to know that story."

"Hmm," he replied, shifting so he was facing her, mirroring her position. "It goes like this: Two people meet during a time of war. Both have made their peace with being too late to start a family, both are surprised to realise this might be a last chance after all. It becomes clear fairly quickly that the relationship was a mistake, though the children certainly were not, and the split is amicable."

There he stopped.

"That's all?" Andromeda asked.

"That's all," Kingsley said. "Not that I regret my marriage to Cynthia in the least. Where would I be without Stor and Em?"

"Didn't she want to take the children with her when she moved back to the U.S.?" Andromeda asked. It was something she'd often wondered.

Kingsley's brow wrinkled. "Somehow…it was just clear to both of us how it should go. Even at that age, the kids had a life here, and friends. And Cynthia has no extended family to help her look after children, she really just has her work. The kids are happy when they get to visit their mother every year, but they come back telling me how _weird_ it all is over there. I don't think it's very easy to be magical in America." He gazed consideringly at the ceiling, then back at Andromeda. "I can say this for Cynthia: She's strong and brilliant and I won't be surprised in the least when I hear she's become the American Secretary of Magic within a few years at the latest."

Then his voice dropped to a deeper pitch, those richly rolling tones that always gave Andromeda a pleasant shiver. "That's my weakness," he murmured. "Strong and brilliant women."

Andromeda could only shake her head. "I'm sure you overestimate me."

That infectious laugh. "I'm certain I don't."

She took a steadying breath, then said, "I'd like if you would tell me about what you remember of Nymphadora. From when you worked with her."

Kingsley studied her for a moment, then slid his arm beneath her, so her head was resting against his shoulder. "Hmm," he said again, and she could feel the rumble of it through his chest. When he spoke again, she could hear in his voice that he was smiling.

"That hair, first of all," he said at the ceiling. "And the absolute, glorious I-don't-care-about-propriety attitude in everything she did. I don't know how well you knew Alastor Moody, but Tonks was the first person I saw coax a smile out of him in about a decade. Not that he was an unhappy person, you have to understand, just that he didn't see the point of wasting time in having _fun_. But Tonks was a person who didn't let you have a choice about that."

Andromeda nodded against his shoulder, not trusting herself to speak.

"And her dedication," Kingsley said softly. "She was too young for that job, but twice as good as a lot of senior Aurors. We could have done with her skills during the clean-up phase after the war, that's for sure."

To her horror, Andromeda felt a single tear fighting its way free. Nearly fourteen years, and sometimes it still felt as if she'd lost Nymphadora yesterday. She breathed hard against the tears, willing them away.

Kingsley must have felt her stiffen, because turned to look at her.

"Oh, Andromeda," he said.

"I'm sorry," she murmured. "My fault. I shouldn't have asked."

He shook his head, and reached up his other hand to rest against her cheek. "I can't imagine," he told her. "I've been trying, since I've known you, but I can't imagine how it was for you. I can't – If –" He shook his head once again, more forcefully. "I don't know how I would survive."

"I was lucky to have Teddy," Andromeda said firmly. "Teddy meant there was no question of not going on."

Kingsley's fingers stroked against her cheek. "Strong and brilliant," he whispered, and Andromeda gave a little choking kind of laugh.

In the strange delayed way of dreams, it wasn't until several days later that Andromeda started awake from a dream about Ted.

She hadn't dreamt about Ted in years, not in any clear way, but this time it was vivid, and she woke with Ted's laugh still ringing in her ears, that great big laugh that always seemed to fill a room. In the dream, he'd been teasing her about something. Ted was the only person she'd ever really allowed to poke fun at her. When they were children, even Bella had learned not to pick on her sister too often, lest she find herself at the receiving end of some very creative hexes. Andromeda didn't stand for anyone picking on her, not ever.

But Ted had always had a way of disarming her.

Andromeda stared into the darkness – it was not yet even dawn – and asked out loud, "Am I letting you down?"

Of course there was no answer.

– – – – –

(to be continued...)


	3. Chapter 3

Andromeda met Kingsley for a last workday lunch before the end of the Hogwarts term.

"I've been wondering what I ought to do with Em next year," Kingsley said, twirling his fork in his pasta absentmindedly. "I used to send them both to the day lessons at the Ministry, which was certainly convenient, but by this point she's learned everything she's going to learn there. I still do lessons with her, on the days we're home together. I swear to you, Andromeda, I've got a budding little Arithmancer on my hands. But she's bored, without Stor at home, and I don't want to put her through another entire year of that, before she can start Hogwarts herself."

"You know, I should have suggested this before," Andromeda told him. "You could send her to Molly's. She runs something of a homeschool for children, before they begin at Hogwarts. It started with just her own grandchildren, but it's grown from there, and some of the children must be Emmeline's age."

"I didn't realise it was an official thing, what Molly does," Kingsley said.

"That's been my impression." Pushing aside the feeling of concern that she might not be ready for these two worlds to combine – intimacy with Kingsley, friendship with Molly – Andromeda suggested, "Why don't you come along at the weekend, and Emmeline can see if she gets along with the Weasleys? Molly always has a big family gathering at the start of the summer, and her definition of family is highly flexible. You know Molly, she likes to collect people."

Kingsley chuckled. "Even people who invite themselves along?"

Andromeda smiled back at him. "You just wait and see."

When Andromeda and Teddy arrived at the Burrow, Molly came bustling out and greeted them both with a warm hug. There were few people Andromeda allowed to treat her so familiarly, few people who would even think to, but somehow she'd never minded it from Molly. The friendship that had grown between them over the last decade was as unshakeable as it had been unexpected.

"I'm so glad you could come," Molly said.

"Molly, when have we ever _not_ come?"

Molly gave Andromeda's arm another squeeze, before turning her attention to thoroughly fussing over Teddy. "Look at you, Teddy Lupin!" she exclaimed, as she gave him another hug and he squirmed. "Where in the name of all magic is the little boy we first sent off to Hogwarts?"

Teddy rolled his eyes good-naturedly at Molly as she released him. "I just _grew_ a little, Gran Molly, that's all," he said. "Everybody does it at some point."

Molly laughed and affectionately smoothed his hair, though she had to reach up now to do so to Teddy at fourteen. "Come out to the garden, the kids are playing some sort of horrifyingly loud game I'm sure you'll want to be part of."

Teddy loped off toward the back garden. Andromeda followed at a more sedate pace, and found Kingsley already there, watching Alastor, who was among the children tearing round the garden.

Going up to Kingsley, Andromeda teased, "Look at you, turning up without an invitation."

He turned to her and smiled. "I had it on very good authority that Molly wouldn't mind."

"Looks like Alastor's having a good time. Where's Emmeline?"

"Off with Bill's middle daughter, I think…Dominique?"

"That's right," Andromeda agreed. Of course, Dominique would be just Emmeline's age.

Andromeda turned to see Teddy, just joining the game, greet Alastor with a grin and a slap on the back. Alastor had been Sorted into Ravenclaw and apparently the two had become friends.

Kingsley followed her gaze and nodded. "Evidence does seem to show Shacklebolts and Tonkses can't help but get on famously."

"Well, Teddy's a Lupin, not a Tonks," Andromeda said fairly.

"As you like," Kingsley agreed, in the voice she'd come to recognise as the one he used when he didn't agree with her, but knew it would be better if he pretended he did.

She leaned over to swat him on the arm. "Don't humour me, Kingsley Shacklebolt. I can tell you Teddy is just as much like his father as he is like his mother."

"Oh, but of course not at all like the woman who raised him," Kingsley murmured. "That would be giving her entirely too much credit."

"And don't you start using sarcasm on me!" Andromeda replied, but she said it with a laugh.

– – – – –

If she was being honest, Andromeda had known that an entire summer of seeing Kingsley only briefly on workdays was not an acceptable option.

It was lucky, then, that Teddy's friendship with Alastor provided a perfectly natural reason for the two families to meet, in the same way that Andromeda often came along to chat with Molly when Teddy played with the Weasleys at the Burrow, or to visit Harry and Ginny when Teddy went to shower his patient brotherly love on the Potter kids.

So Andromeda dropped by Kingsley's house together with Teddy sometimes, or they all went out for ice-cream together. Once, they took the children to the coast for an afternoon, where Teddy and Alastor ran tirelessly back and forth with a Quaffle and Emmeline sat daydreaming and drawing in a sketchbook. Andromeda and Kingsley sat on a picnic blanket and shared the tea he'd brought along, charmed to stay piping hot.

When Alastor joined a group of younger boys playing by the water, Teddy came back and dropped onto the blanket, pushing back the hair that always seemed to flop into his eyes, no matter how often Andromeda reminded him it would be the work of a moment for him to make it grow shorter.

"Mr Shacklebolt, are you still an Auror?" he asked. Teddy had seemed at ease with Kingsley from the first.

Kingsley turned his full attention to Teddy. "No, Teddy, I'm not," he said. "I left active service when I became Minister for Magic."

"So you can't be both, then?" Teddy asked, absently helping himself to several biscuits. "You had to choose between being Minister and being an Auror?"

"That's right," Kingsley agreed. "But it's the same whatever job the Minister holds before. You leave your previous job to take up the post."

"Was it cool, being an Auror?" Teddy wanted to know, sounding a little dreamy.

"Teddy!" Andromeda said, surprised. Where had this line of questioning come from?

"What?" Teddy asked. "Harry and Uncle Ron try to make it sound like all they ever do is sit around in the office doing paperwork, but I know it's not true. You read in class and stuff about all the important things Aurors have done. Harry just tries to make it sound boring because thinks it's dangerous and he doesn't want any of us to want to be Aurors. Which is silly, right, 'cause _he's_ one."

"He's right that it's a dangerous job," Kingsley answered, regarding Andromeda's grandson seriously. "And I'm not sure 'cool' is the best descriptor. Rewarding, yes, and difficult. But it's not exactly an uninterrupted string of fantastic adventures."

Teddy nodded, and seemed to think about that. For a few moments, there was no sound but the scratching of Emmeline's drawing pencil. Then suddenly, with a strange little furtive look toward Andromeda, Teddy turned back to Kingsley and asked, "So did you know my mum, then? Since she was an Auror too?"

Andromeda's breath caught. She should have expected that question, yet somehow she'd managed not to.

But Kingsley answered steadily, "Yes, I did. She was a marvellous Auror, and I considered her a friend. Your father, too."

Teddy gazed up into Kingsley's face with heartbreaking intensity. "You knew my dad?"

"I was in the Order of the Phoenix, so I knew both your parents."

"Oh." Teddy hugged a knee to his chest and didn't say anything to that. Then he sent another involuntary half-glance in Andromeda's direction and finally she understood: Teddy wanted to hear more about his parents from this unexpected new source, but he was afraid of upsetting Andromeda by bringing them up.

Andromeda stood and brushed a bit of dirt from her skirt. "I think I'll go see what Alastor is up to. It looks like he and those boys are building a stone fort down there."

Kingsley squinted up at her, a question in his eyes, and Andromeda gave him a tiny nod. It was right that Teddy get pieces of his parents wherever he could, and good that he felt comfortable asking Kingsley. And Andromeda couldn't always be there to protect him when Nymphadora and Remus came up in conversation.

So she left them to it and found a rock to sit on near where Alastor's new friends were collecting the largest stones they could find on the pebbly beach and assembling them into a rough circle. She turned her face up to the sun, soothed by the sound of the boys' chatter, and tried to loosen that ache in her chest that came whenever she thought about how everyone else but Teddy had had the chance to know Teddy's parents.

Sitting there in the summer sun, Andromeda reached a decision she'd been waiting on for a while. At home that evening, she fetched a slim notebook and a narrow box from a top shelf in her bedroom and brought them back downstairs to where Teddy was curled up with a book in the sitting room.

"Teddy," she said, and he looked up from the pages. "There are some things I'd like to give you. I think you're old enough now."

She saw the shift in his posture, a tension of readiness. "Sure, okay," he said.

Andromeda came and sat in the other armchair beside him. She set the small notebook on her lap and smoothed her hand over the cover. "This is a journal your mother kept when she was in Auror training. From the fact that she left it lying around here with no protective charms, I assume she wouldn't mind terribly if you read it. In fact, I imagine she'd be pleased.

"I was never quite sure if you would want to read this, because, well, she also mentions friends, men she fancied, things like that. This was a while before she met your father. It's nothing too detailed," she hastened to add. "But she also writes about her day-to-day experiences in her job, so if you're curious what her work was like, I really shouldn't keep this from you."

She held out the thin volume to Teddy and he took it with wide eyes, not lifting the cover yet, just resting a careful hand against its spine. "Are there – other journals?" he asked. "Did she write ones later, I mean?"

Andromeda shook her head, knowing what he was asking. "If she wrote about meeting your father, she was clever enough not to leave that anywhere her mother's prying eyes might see. I'm sorry, love."

"That's okay," Teddy murmured, his eyes fixed on the book in his hand. "Thank you."

"And there's something else," Andromeda said. Teddy looked up, and she held out the narrow box. "These were your parents' wands."

Teddy just stared, and couldn't seem to bring himself to reach out and take the box. "My…?"

"They were – found with their wands, of course. And I kept them for you. I didn't tell you when you started Hogwarts because it was right that you find your own wand, one that was exactly right for you. But these belong to you as well."

Teddy finally reached out the take the box, his voice barely a whisper. "Thank you, Gran."

This time, he did open the object in his hand, setting the lid carefully aside and staring down into the box, where two wands nestled in soft, purple cloth.

"The one on the left is your mother's," Andromeda said quietly. "The very first time she waved it around at Ollivander's, a bouquet of flowers popped out of the end."

Teddy reached his wand hand into the box and gently touched one wand, then the other. "They feel kind of warm," he said. "A little bit tingly. Not as much as my wand did, when I got it, but still like they're maybe responding to me. Is that possible?"

"It's absolutely possible," Andromeda said.

"Do you think I could try using them instead of my wand, sometimes?"

"I imagine you could," Andromeda said. "But I think you'd better wait and ask your professors' advice first, when you're back at school."

She had decided now was not the time to tell Teddy about the more intricate aspects of wandlore, that his mother's wand might bear certain allegiances to Molly, because Molly had killed Bellatrix after Bellatrix murdered Nymphadora. Or, more troublingly, that his father's wand might still display loyalty to a Death Eater's descendants.

Such complexities could wait until Teddy was older, and hopefully would never be relevant at all as anything more than an academic question.

At any rate, Teddy nodded and gently set the lid back on the wand box. "Mr Shacklebolt told me a bunch of stuff he remembered about Dad," he said, so quietly that Andromeda had to lean closer to hear him. "It was nice."

"I'm glad," Andromeda said, and she was.

Teddy nodded again. "I think I'll take these up to my room."

Andromeda watched him rise, carefully collecting the box and the book and leaving the room with the same peculiar grace Remus had always possessed. Andromeda saw Nymphadora in Teddy's quick smiles and open expressions, even aside from the obvious fact that he had inherited her rare Metamorphmagism, but he was purely Remus in the way he held himself, that quiet self-possession.

Far more importantly, though, Teddy had always been simply himself.

The rest of the summer holiday passed in a blur of picnics and outings and pleasant afternoons with the Potters. Seven-year-old James had developed a new obsession with becoming a professional Quidditch player, and made Teddy practise plays and drills with him for hours on a pair of toy brooms.

"Entirely Ginny's fault," Harry assured Andromeda, and Ginny just grinned.

A few days before September the first, Teddy looked up from his toast at breakfast one morning and asked, "You're all right, aren't you, Gran?"

Andromeda turned from the teakettle in surprise. "What do you mean?"

"It's just, sometimes you seem really sad, but lately I think you're all right. Aren't you?"

Andromeda gave the question the full consideration it deserved, then said, "Yes, I suppose you're right, Teddy. I am."

_(to be continued...)_


	4. Chapter 4

"How's the group this year? Has it worked out with Emmeline joining?" Andromeda asked Molly one day that autumn. It was early evening, and the two women were in the garden at the Burrow, enjoying one of the last truly warm days of the season.

"Oh, Emmeline is lovely," Molly sighed. "Mind you, she's a real daydreamer and half the time I doubt she's listening to anything I say, but she never causes trouble. She's nothing like her namesake, of course."

"That's right," Andromeda said. "Of course you knew Emmeline Vance, from the Order?"

Molly gazed into the distance. "I didn't know her well, she kept very much to herself, but we all respected her. She was an incredible witch."

"I've never asked Kingsley about that," Andromeda said. She'd certainly wondered about his daughter's name, but hadn't wanted to pry into Kingsley's reasons for it. "I know he was close to Alastor Moody, but I don't really know about Emmeline."

Molly nodded. "I think they were even sweethearts at one point, but very far back, when they were still at Hogwarts."

Molly's gaze was still far away, so she didn't see Andromeda's look of surprise.

"But they stayed good friends," Molly continued. "I imagine Kingsley was one of the few people who really knew her. It must have been hard, losing her and Mad-Eye both in the space of a year."

"That's terrible," Andromeda said. "I didn't realise."

Molly pulled her gaze back from the trees and her voice turned practical again. "I was so glad for Kingsley, you know, when he met that woman from the American Ministry of Magic, or whatever it's called over there. We've so rarely seen him take a real interest in a woman, and he's such a good man. He just has terribly high standards, I suppose, but it _would _be nice to see him settle down. Well, settle down again."

Andromeda smiled. "Molly, you can't match-make for everyone."

Molly sighed and, as Andromeda had known she would, began to deliberate over whether Charlie, her last holdout child, would ever marry.

Andromeda hadn't meant even to mention the conversation to Kingsley, but one day she found herself saying, "You know, Molly thinks you have 'terribly high standards'. She seems to think you'll never manage to find a woman who fulfils them."

Kingsley chuckled and turned from his cooking to look at her.

They spent the days together sometimes, when the Wizengamot wasn't in session and Emmeline was at the Burrow, and Kingsley often insisted on cooking for Andromeda. He generally refused to let her help, but Andromeda didn't mind simply leaning against the worktop and watching him. There was really nothing like the sight of a powerfully built man who felt at home in a kitchen and an apron.

"And how exactly did my high standards come up with Molly?" Kingsley asked, eyes twinkling.

"She was bemoaning your hopeless bachelor status, of course. And wishing you would settle down, again."

Kingsley twirled his wand over the pan and said, "Molly must be losing her touch. I've always thought of her as so observant about people."

"What do you mean?"

"I was sure by now she must have noticed the way I look at you."

He turned again, then, and fixed the full force of his warm gaze on Andromeda. "Yes," she murmured. "That's fairly noticeable."

"Hmm," Kingsley agreed, smiling and turning back to his saucepan.

– – – – –

The next to turn a conversation in a surprising direction was Ginny.

"Would you ever think about writing again?" she asked one evening when Andromeda was visiting. "You used to write for the _Daily Prophet_, didn't you? Back before it became a load of Doxy droppings, I mean?"

"Yes, I did," Andromeda said. "But that was a _very _long time ago. Before Nymphadora even started at Hogwarts. Why do you ask?"

"They've been talking at the paper – at the _Mirror_, I mean – about finding someone to do a new opinion column on legal and historical topics, commentary on current events, stuff like that. I thought of you from the moment my editor mentioned it."

"Goodness," Andromeda said. "I'm not sure what to say."

"Say you'll think about it," Ginny urged. "You know so much, Andromeda. I can't think of anyone better."

Honestly, Andromeda had thought at times about putting some of her reflections into writing, but she'd never thought about it very seriously.

"What do you think?" she asked Kingsley, when she told him about Ginny's suggestion.

"I think you'd be brilliant at it," he answered, and just like that Andromeda found herself agreeing to a meeting with Ginny's editor at the _Magical Mirror_, the paper that had started after the _Daily Prophet_ had collapsed after the war under the weight of its own poor journalism standards.

Ultimately, she and the editors settled on a column that would appear twice monthly, covering topics of wizarding culture and society, wizarding–Muggle relations, history and law. The editor-in-chief had wanted to run it under the name "Andromeda Black Tonks," presumably to emphasise the way Andromeda's own life entwined the extremes of pure-blood and Muggle-born society, but Andromeda had never in her life used that name and saw no reason to start now.

For her inaugural piece, Andromeda wanted to start with something engaging but not too polarising – there would be time enough later to take up touchier subjects such as Muggle relations, still a delicate topic – and hit upon the idea of examining legal attitudes toward dangerous Beasts over the centuries, with a few sly references to the times when wizarding law had been determined rather less by logic and more by the fact that everyone involved was too terrified to approach the Beast in question.

Andromeda had a great deal of help on the subject from Hermione, who still remembered much of what she'd researched back as a girl at Hogwarts for the Hippogriff case Sirius had got himself involved in. Actually, Andromeda suspected Hermione had _kept_ her notes from the case, but was too embarrassed to admit to saving all her school papers.

Hermione had lit up when Andromeda asked if they could meet for lunch to discuss a few ideas, and Andromeda thought perhaps there was some truth to Kingsley's suggestion that the younger woman saw her as something of a role model.

The first column, titled "Fantastic Beasts and When to Try Them Before a Court of Law," ran in late winter. Later the same day, Andromeda looked up to see Teddy's dun-coloured barn owl, Junior Junior (the name was a long story), tapping at the window.

The note clutched in Junior Junior's talons looked as though it might have begun as Teddy's serviette from breakfast – there was a juice stain on one corner – and his hasty scrawl read,

_Gran! Just read your column and it's brilliant. Why didn't you tell me you were such a great writer? Now I can't wait to read all the next ones. Not to mention when you write your first book. Love,_

_T_

That was a note Andromeda tucked away in her top drawer for safekeeping.

– – – – –

Emmeline had taken to Molly's home lessons like a Bowtruckle to a tree, becoming friends with Bill's middle child, Dominique, who would also be starting Hogwarts in the autumn.

The two girls frequently begged to be allowed sleepovers together at Shell Cottage, and one unintended result was many more evenings and nights that Kingsley and Andromeda were left free to spend together. It began to feel normal to fall asleep next to Kingsley, to wake up next to him, to share her small bathroom as they both got ready for work.

In fact, she was growing rather fond of all those things.

One night as Andromeda was half dozing, happy to have Kingsley's arm around her and his weight beside her in the bed, his voice rumbled out of the dark. "Can I ask you something?"

"Of course." Andromeda reached for her wand and cast a soft _Lumos_, so she could see him.

"I've just been wondering," Kingsley said. "Is there a particular reason I'm keeping my relationship with you a secret? Or is it just a habit we've fallen into?"

It wasn't something they'd ever properly talked about. Andromeda herself had always tended toward circumspection, and besides, the wizarding community was small and prone to gossip. But no, there was no good reason for it, and she said as much.

"I'm not pushing you to do anything you don't want to do," Kingsley hastened to add. "I'm happy to have secret trysts with you until the end of our days, if you prefer."

_Until the end of our days_.

Kingsley reached over to touch a finger to her cheek. "I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable."

"No, no, not at all," Andromeda assured him. "But now I'm wondering at myself. All those times Molly has sighed over your bachelorhood, or itched to set me up with some nice gentleman she's met, I suppose I really could have mentioned this to her."

"And put her out of her misery," Kingsley agreed. "Just think how many sleepless nights we must have caused poor Molly by now, between the two of us."

Andromeda smiled at that. "I do wonder a bit what Teddy would think, and what your children would think."

Kingsley shrugged. "Stor and Em like you. And they and Teddy get on very well."

"It's all very well to like a person casually, but things get more complicated when families combine," Andromeda told him.

"Is that the voice of experience speaking?"

Well, Andromeda had resolved to try to share more of herself and her past with Kingsley, though he never demanded she do so.

"I suppose so," she agreed. "You can certainly imagine what my family thought of Ted, though that's hardly a normal example," she said. "But take Remus...I liked him very much as a man, and terribly well as a friend to Sirius, probably the best influence Sirius ever had. But I admit, I struggled when Nymphadora became serious about him. An older man with no job prospects and an incurable disease was not exactly what I had hoped for my daughter."

"And any parent would understand you," Kingsley agreed. "But Remus was a great man."

"Of course he was," Andromeda said. "And I came to see that."

"And Stor and Em will absolutely accept you. I really don't think they'll find it strange."

"I truly don't mind if others know about us," Andromeda assured him. "I suppose I just didn't mind either that they _didn't_ know."

"One person does know already," Kingsley admitted, sounding contrite. "I did tell Bill."

"Bill Weasley?" Andromeda asked blankly, momentarily at a loss as to why her relationship with Kingsley should matter in the least to Molly's eldest son.

"When Em started sleeping over at their place so often, I wanted them to know where to reach me in an emergency," Kingsley explained. "So I told Bill in confidence that I could most likely be found here. I'm quite sure, though, that he's never told anyone else."

Andromeda leaned over to still his rationalisations with a kiss. "Kingsley, when I say I don't mind, I really don't mind. I'm not embarrassed about us. Just a bit…private by nature."

"Mysterious," Kingsley agreed with a grin. "Enigmatic, you could say."

"Yes, whatever you choose to call it."

"Secretive?" he offered. "Arcane. Unfathomable. Opaque."

"Yes, yes, we all know you have a learned and extensive vocabulary, Mr Minister."

"Impudent," Kingsley concluded happily, pulling Andromeda in for another kiss.

– – – – –

_(to be continued...)_


	5. Chapter 5

Something seemed off with Teddy from the moment he stepped off the train for the summer holidays, but Andromeda didn't find out what it was until late that evening. He'd said he was going up to bed, but kept stalling, finding items he'd forgotten in the kitchen or the sitting room.

Andromeda was tidying the kitchen when Teddy's nervous perambulations finally brought him to a halt in the doorway.

"Gran –" he began, then looked as if he were about to leave again.

"Yes, Teddy?"

The question finally burst out. "Is it true you and Mr Shacklebolt have been secretly dating for years?"

Now he had her attention. "I – yes, Teddy, but it's not that it's a secret –"

"Were you _ever_ planning to tell me?"

"This summer, in fact."

"And does everyone know but me? Stor says he's known for ages."

"I'm not sure how Alastor knew that, but –"

"So it's true? And Stor knew?"

Andromeda threw up her hands in exasperation. "I have no idea how Alastor knew. It isn't something we've shared with anyone until very recently."

Teddy's expression grew darker. "So everyone already knows except me. Great. I feel _so _much like I'm part of this family, thanks."

"Don't be sarcastic, Teddy," Andromeda responded automatically. "The fact of the matter is that I've told the Weasleys and the Potters only within the last month, and today is the first I've seen you. Would you have preferred an owl?"

"No," Teddy grumbled. "Doesn't matter anyway."

"But you get on well with Kingsley –"

"I said it doesn't _matter_." Teddy turned to go.

"Teddy," Andromeda said, and her tone was powerful enough that he stopped in his tracks and looked back at her unwillingly.

"Teddy Remus Lupin," she said. "You know you'll always be the heart and soul of my world."

"Aw, I don't care about _that_," Teddy said, but Andromeda thought his slumped shoulders sat a little lighter as he turned again towards the stairs.

"But still, it's true," she said, and he squirmed, embarrassed. "Good night, Teddy. I'm glad you're home."

"Good night, Gran, I'm-happy-for-you-actually," he mumbled all at once, then bolted for the stairs.

– – – – –

"I should have known!" Molly had sighed when Andromeda told her about Kingsley. "You've seemed so happy lately, and the way he looks at you…" Molly lost no time in adding Kingsley and his children to the ever-growing list for her family gatherings.

But at the same time other parts of Andromeda's life were coming closer together, Teddy seemed to want more space.

"Teddy," she reasoned, when he asked to be allowed to go in to Diagon Alley with just Alastor, not chaperoned by her and Kingsley, "you maybe be fifteen, but Alastor is only thirteen. Do you really think his father wants him out in London without an adult?"

"Mr Shacklebolt lets Stor go places all the time!" Teddy protested. "You're the only one who won't let me do anything alone. There's not a _war_ on anymore, Gran, sometimes I don't know if you know that."

Andromeda opened her mouth, then closed it and made herself count to ten before she answered. "You're not going to Diagon Alley with Alastor," she said. "You're welcome to meet him at his house, or to go out in the village here, but I'm not having you two alone in central London just yet. I'm sorry, but that's my decision."

"Urnng," said Teddy, which wasn't even a word, then he stomped up to his room for a while.

"He's become so irrational," Andromeda complained later to Kingsley.

Kingsley smiled. "He's become a teenager."

"Easy for _you_ to take so lightly," she retorted. "You just wait a couple years."

Teenager Teddy might be, but it still made Andromeda smile to see him shepherding Emmeline onto the Hogwarts Express that September, his new prefect's badge glinting from his chest.

"I have to meet the other prefects in the front carriage, but after that I'll come check on you, okay?" Andromeda heard him say. "Should we go find out where Dominique is sitting?"

Kingsley came up and poked Andromeda inelegantly in the side, muttering, "Now, who raised him to be such a gentleman, I wonder? Was that you?"

"Yes, I suppose it was," Andromeda allowed.

Just before the train was set to depart, Emmeline cried, "Daddy!" and flung herself back off the steps of the train carriage toward her father's arms. Kingsley caught her and wrapped her in a tight hug. Andromeda watched him whispering reassurances into his daughter's hair with a tugging in her chest.

"Hey, Gran," Teddy called from the window of the train, where he was leaning out with a grin on his face. He'd made his hair stripes of blue and bronze today, Ravenclaw's house colours. Neither blue nor bronze was a flattering hair colour, but nothing Andromeda had said that morning had convinced him to change it. "All right?"

It was startling how hard it was to see him leave each September, even now. "Be good, Teddy," she said. "Study hard and do justice to that badge you're wearing, and don't forget to write. And look out for Emmeline, won't you? And Dominique, and Victoire…"

Teddy rolled his eyes. "Hey, Gran, it's me you're talking to, Teddy Lupin. I do all those things anyway."

"I know you do."

"Take care, Gran," he called over the growing noise of the locomotive. "And I'm expecting some really ace stuff from you in that newspaper column, okay?"

"Anything for you, Teddy," Andromeda called up to him.

Emmeline clambered back on board just before the train began to move, and the three of them, Teddy and Alastor and Emmeline, leaned out the window together, waving.

"See you in December!" Teddy yelled, and Andromeda blew him a last kiss.

She waved until the train was well out of the station, then turned to Kingsley.

He was still staring after the train. "That's it, then," he said. "My baby's gone. What do I do _now_?"

Luckily, Andromeda had experience with this particular situation. "What you do now," she said, "is let me take you out for ice-cream."

– – – – –

_(to be continued...)_


	6. Chapter 6

With more free time again, Andromeda began turning her column for the _Magical Mirror_ to tougher topics – the origins of house-elf servitude, the complex history of legal contracts between humans and goblins, Muggle–wizard relations through the centuries.

And for the first time, Andromeda began to receive hate mail by owl, from witches and wizards who disagreed with her views in a wider variety of ways than she would have imagined possible.

"Should I be worried?" Kingsley asked, getting that hard Auror look in his eyes that Andromeda only rarely saw, when she spread out the letters on her kitchen table to show him.

Andromeda shook her head. "The people who are worth worrying about don't waste their time writing letters." Then she sighed. "Is it wrong to be glad, just occasionally, that one's entire family is dead, aside from one aggravating but not particularly dangerous sister?"

Kingsley just looked at her for a moment, and Andromeda thought perhaps this time she'd spoken of her family_ too_ candidly.

Then, to her surprise, he came and wrapped his arms around her. "No, it's not wrong," he said. "And I think it's very brave of you to put your name to your views in public this way."

"It's no different from what you did for ten years," Andromeda said.

"The difference is that ministers have security details," Kingsley replied darkly. Still, he released her from his embrace and squeezed her hand. "All right, I'll trust you to know if you're in mortal danger, and if so, maybe to give me a bit of advance warning."

"That's a deal," she agreed.

That year seemed to fly by. Kingsley stayed at her house much of the time, and Molly invited them over to dinner at the Burrow often. Kingsley and his children came to the Weasleys' for Christmas that year, and Andromeda remembered the last time both she and Kingsley had been at the Burrow at Christmas: It had been the first winter after the end of the war, fifteen years ago now. Teddy had been just a baby, Kingsley newly the Minister for Magic and not yet even married. Andromeda had been preoccupied then with her own losses; perhaps they all were. In many ways, that seemed a different world from the one in which she lived today.

After all she'd lost, Andromeda found herself surprised and grateful to have ended up where she was now.

All seemed to be well, in fact, until one day not long after the Easter holidays, when Junior Junior swooped in with a letter, in which Teddy wrote that he'd recently had his careers counselling with his Head of House, and was thinking of becoming an Auror.

Andromeda stood in her kitchen and stared at the letter in her hand, something cold running down her spine. Part of her thoughts were taken up with a small echo of Nymphadora's voice ("Mum, look, top marks on the entrance exam!") but a much larger part simply saw Teddy himself, Teddy with his irrepressible smile, and Andromeda's whole heart rebelled at the thought of ever losing that. Losing him.

She thought about all the possible responses to this letter, weighed them against each other, and decided for the time being not to answer that part of Teddy's letter at all. Perhaps it was no more than a passing fancy.

But after two more letters with mentions of the topic ("Professor Wiggentree says my Potions marks are finally up to where they need to be if I want to do Auror training, that's the only one I was worried about this year" and "Maybe Mr Shacklebolt can give me some tips this summer, you know, about what I need to practise if I want to make it into Training. I wrote Harry a couple times too") Andromeda was definitely worried.

She would have to talk to Teddy about it. It wasn't a conversation she looked forward to.

When she shared her concerns with Kingsley, she was relieved that he nodded and said he understood.

"I thought you wouldn't," she admitted. "As a former Auror yourself."

"Of course I do," he said. "You think I didn't terrify my mother every single day?"

"Exactly," Andromeda said. "I can't do that again."

Kingsley looked pensive, then said, "Just remember…if he's really got his heart set on this, you may not be able dissuade him. You can tell him how you feel, you can even try to forbid him from doing it, but you can't change what he wants."

Andromeda shook her head. "Teddy's not like that. If I sit him down and explain, he'll listen."

Yet even after Teddy came home for the summer, Andromeda found herself putting off the conversation. She kept seeing Nymphadora in her mind's eye, the way her daughter had glowed when she'd been accepted into Auror training, and again when she'd passed the exams and qualified as a full Auror. Nymphadora had wanted that so badly and been so proud when she'd succeeded.

Andromeda kept delaying, which it was easy to do because Teddy was out of the house so much of the time anyway, meeting his friends from Ravenclaw or visiting the Potters or the Burrow.

Then over breakfast one morning in mid-July, as Teddy absentmindedly made his arm longer so he could reach the honey on the other side of the table – Andromeda was certain Nymphadora had never morphed her limbs that way and it still gave her a shock when Teddy did it – they both looked up to a sharp tap at the kitchen window. A keen-eyed eagle owl waited there on patiently beating wings, an official-looking letter clutched in its talons.

"O.W.L. results!" Teddy cried, suddenly wide awake, and flung himself at the window to let the Hogwarts owl in. He took the letter gently from its talons, then clutched the envelope as the owl sipped from a saucer of water Andromeda set on the table.

"Go on, open it," Andromeda said, as the owl took flight once more and she closed the window behind it. "Waiting won't make what's inside any better or worse."

Teddy carefully slit the envelope open and scanned the parchment he unfolded from within, then heaved an enormous sigh. "Everything okay. I was worried about Potions, 'cause it's been a lot harder this year, but I got an E after all. Here." He held the parchment out to Andromeda and she read,

_THEODORE REMUS LUPIN HAS ACHIEVED:_

_Arithmancy: E_

_Astronomy: A_

_Care of Magical Creatures: O_

_Charms: E_

_Defence Against the Dark Arts: O_

_Herbology: O_

_History of Magic: E_

_Potions: E_

_Transfiguration: O_

"Oh, Teddy," she said. "Nine O.W.L.s." She debated briefly whether or not she could still hug this grown-up, tall, self-assured, 16-year-old Teddy, and decided she could.

"Aw, Gran," he said, blushing, and disentangled himself again as soon as it was polite to do so.

"This calls for a celebration," she told him. "Tell me who you'd like to invite over, and we'll have a big dinner. But Teddy…first, there's something I needed to talk to you about."

Teddy, who'd dropped back into his chair and was once again contentedly perusing his letter, looked up in surprise. "Okay….?"

Andromeda took her own seat across from him again, both their breakfasts now forgotten.

"You mentioned in a few of your letters that you'd been thinking of becoming an Auror," she began. "Is that still something you're considering?"

"Yeah."

"When did this start?"

Teddy looked at her uncomprehendingly. "I've always wanted to be an Auror."

This was news. "I see. How did you reach that decision?"

"I dunno, I just always thought that's what I'd like to do."

"I have to ask you to please reconsider."

"What! Why?"

"What happened to becoming a Healer?"

She could see him just barely suppressing an eye roll. "I never wanted to be a Healer, Gran. That was your idea."

"But it's such important work," she said. _And almost certain never to get you killed_, she didn't add. "You've always been good at the necessary subjects – Charms, Potions, Herbology…"

"Yeah, but I don't _want_ to be a Healer. And anyway, most of those are subjects I need for Auror training too. Plus Transfig, which everyone always says I'm ace at, and Defence, and I'm good at that too."

"Something else in the Ministry, then – you could work in other aspects of Magical Law Enforcement. Or even become a teacher like your father."

He was staring at her, baffled. "Why don't you want me to be an Auror?"

"Teddy, you honestly can't imagine any reason I might not want you to make hunting criminal wizards your daily work?"

"Yeah, it's a bit dangerous, but –"

"A _bit_ dangerous!"

"Okay, yeah it's dangerous, but the whole point is that you train really, really hard, so that you know how to do things right and how not put yourself in situations you can't get out of. I've read all about it, I know what it's like. And it's what I want to _do_."

"All I'm asking is that you consider other careers. You have plenty of time before you have to decide on something."

Teddy glared mutinously. "I know what this is really about. And I'm not my mum."

As soon as he said it, he looked as if he wished he could take his words back.

"I know you're not," Andromeda said softly. "But your mother was extremely good at her job and we still lost her."

"But there's no war now," Teddy insisted.

"No, but there will always be Dark wizards."

"Yeah, which is why there have to be Aurors!"

"And I'm grateful there are, but Merlin forgive me, I can't lose anyone else to their cause!"

Teddy lifted his chin in a way that was so very much Nymphadora. "Are you going to forbid me?"

"No, Teddy. But I'm going to ask you, please, to think very hard about this before you take a decision. Give serious consideration to the many other options you have. You're a bright boy – you could do anything you set your mind to."

"All right," he mumbled.

"Do I have your word?"

"On what, exactly?"

"That you'll give just as serious consideration to other careers. And that we'll talk again before you decide anything."

"Yeah, okay."

Andromeda sighed. "Good. Then we have a celebratory dinner to plan."

– – – – –

"Was I wrong to dissuade him?" Andromeda wondered to Molly, near the end of that summer. It was a rare afternoon in which Molly wasn't looking after even one of her grandchildren, and the two women were sitting together in the garden at the Burrow.

"From wanting to be an Auror, you mean?"

"Yes. Is it selfish of me to ask him to choose something else?"

Molly sighed. "You do realise, don't you, that you're talking to a woman who not only has one son who's an Auror, but another who interacts with goblins for a living, and one who works with _dragons_ and one who regularly invents things that explode… Not to mention a daughter who decided to play Quidditch instead of doing something safe and sensible."

"In other words…?"

"In other words, I suppose, they have a way of breaking your heart sometimes without even meaning to," Molly murmured. Then she gave herself a small shake and said, "What I mean is, if I could have dissuaded any of them from choosing the paths they did, I probably would have. But they're happy, all of them, and that's a wonderful thing to see."

"So you think I'm in the wrong with Teddy."

"Not necessarily," Molly said. "You're right to tell him how you feel."

"I suppose so," Andromeda murmured. "Yes, I suppose so."

– – – – –

_(to be continued...)_

_– – – – –_

_Small note here: I try to write so that each story stands alone, but if you want to read my stories as existing in the same universe...then Andromeda's recollection of "the last time both she and Kingsley had been at the Burrow at Christmas," 15 years before, took place in my story "Chambers"!  
_


	7. Chapter 7

"Why don't we go on holiday together?" Kingsley asked, barely a minute after they had finished waving goodbye to the Hogwarts Express pulling out of King's Cross.

"On holiday?" Andromeda repeated.

"Yes, see, it's this tradition where people who enjoy one another's company go away somewhere together…"

Andromeda nearly rolled her eyes, a bad habit she was clearly picking up from Teddy. "Yes, thank you, I do know what a holiday is. And you would like us to go on one?"

"Yes, please," Kingsley grinned.

In Andromeda's mind, holidays were firmly linked with Teddy – weekends they spent at the seaside, or times she'd taken him to the continent when he was younger, so he wouldn't grow up as ignorant of the world as most British wizards. Now, without Teddy at home, it would hardly have occurred to Andromeda to take a holiday of her own. "Well, all right," she said. "When, then?"

"When are you free?"

Andromeda mentally scrolled through the Wizengamot's upcoming sessions, which tended to cluster erratically depending on the case to be heard and whether or not the full court was needed. "I think there's a week at the end of the month where we have no sessions at all. Where were you thinking of going?"

"If I promise you'll love it, will you let me plan everything?" he asked, and his expression was so boyishly delighted that she found herself agreeing.

Three weeks later, Andromeda arrived at Kingsley's house with her luggage magically shrunk inside a handbag. He opened the door with a big grin on his face and a chipped saucer in one hand.

"Portkey to paradise," he announced, waving the saucer.

"I'm having misgivings already," Andromeda said, eyeing the thing.

"You just like saying that," Kingsley said fondly. "Come on in, it's set to go in ten minutes."

Ten minutes and one Portkey later, Andromeda found herself on a white sand beach by a calm sea, with a chill in the air and an unmistakeable scent of pine. She couldn't even begin to guess where she was.

"Lithuania," Kingsley said beside her. "The Baltic Sea. I've always been partial to this place, I can't really explain it. Something magical about it… Well, I meant that in the metaphorical sense, but it's literally true as well. The woods here are a stopover point for fairies migrating south, and we _might_ be just early enough in the year to see them."

"It's lovely," Andromeda said, gazing out to sea, and heard Kingsley give a sigh of relief.

"Oh, good," he said. "Here, we're staying in one of the cabins just behind the dune, I arranged it all ahead of time. This way."

They stowed their things in the small, cosy cabin, then Kingsley said, "Come on, the sun's just about to set" and led Andromeda back out to the west-facing beach. The sun was hazy and low on the horizon and the sky around it a brilliant pink.

They strolled to the end of small wooden pier that bobbed from the beach, held in place only by magic. There was no one else around, although Kingsley had said there was a village nearby and a few other holiday bungalows. Fairy lights were just beginning to twinkle in the woods behind them.

"How romantic," Andromeda said, smiling at Kingsley as they settled down to sit at the end of the pier, their legs dangling toward the water below. He slipped an arm around her and as the pier swayed gently beneath them, Andromeda fancied she could feel the subtle thrum of the magic that held it up.

"Look at us, old folks pretending at a young lovers' getaway," she laughed. The whole place had that feeling to it, a romantic retreat that would surely be beloved of young couples in the high season.

Far from being insulted, Kingsley just laughed right back at her. "I don't know about you, Ms Tonks, but I plan to live to 150 at least, so I'm not sure who you're calling 'old'. Let's compromise and call it 'distinguished,' shall we?"

"Distinguished indeed," Andromeda said, reaching up to touch his cheek.

The sun was a fiery orb just sinking into the clouds, and Andromeda watched the colours it spread across the sky. "Ted and I never got much chance to do these young couple sorts of things," she said.

"Hmm," Kingsley answered, his listening noise.

"As soon as we left school, we were both working as hard as we could, trying to advance at the Ministry. And then all of a sudden we had Nymphadora." She smiled out at the setting sun. "The best mistake I've ever made, though."

"Hard to imagine you making a mistake of any sort, really," Kingsley said, also looking out at the sunset.

"I wasn't even sure I wanted children," Andromeda admitted. "Ted did, and I suppose I figured I'd let him talk me into it sooner or later. But I thought – well, with my family background, I didn't suppose I'd make a very good mother."

"I never knew that," Kingsley said quietly. He slipped his hand into hers, and they both watched the glowing red sun as it slowly sank into the sea.

"Sorry," Andromeda said, as the light faded and an evening chill began to settle in. "I'm not sure what brought all that up."

Kingsley shook his head. "There's no need to be sorry. I'm always glad when you share things with me."

Andromeda nodded, not sure what to say to that.

"And now do you want to see the fairy glen?" he asked.

Andromeda smiled and allowed him to offer her a hand up.

After a quiet stroll through the nearby forest, where fairy lights winked from behind trees and within the brush, they returned to the cabin to find that the proprietor, an elderly wizard, had arrived with an armful of linens. The man spoke a little German, which luckily Kingsley spoke as well. Andromeda, thanks to her family, had only learned French as a child.

Once the proprietor had left, they cooked dinner in an old-fashioned cauldron in the small fireplace, working together to figure out how to simplify their cooking down to a single cauldron over a single flame.

"Maybe I should have found somewhere a little less rustic," Kingsley said.

"Maybe you should stop worrying," Andromeda smiled.

She couldn't remember the last time she'd taken a holiday like this, with time just for strolling along the beach or through the woods, then cooking simple meals together in the evenings.

As they walked along the beach the next day, Andromeda talked about Teddy – talked about him too much, likely, but this talk of careers counselling had his future very much on her mind.

"I'm not worried about him," she told Kingsley as they climbed the nearby sand dunes. "I'm sure whatever he does, he'll be all right. It's only for my own sake that a bit of me can't help wishing he could stay a boy at Hogwarts forever, where he's safe."

Another day, as they were shopping for vegetables in the village market, Andromeda wondered aloud, "What am I going to do with myself when Teddy is grown up?"

Kingsley gave her a highly sceptical look over a bunch of turnips. "Really, Andromeda?"

"I've spent quite literally all of my adult life raising Nymphadora, then Teddy. I'm not sure I know how else to live."

"You'll do the things you already do," Kingsley said. "Spend time with your friends, with your work, your writing. Perhaps you'll even find time for me."

"Why, yes, of course," Andromeda said, baffled by the turn this conversation had taken. "Of course I will."

They paid for their purchases and took the path back to the beach, but even as they reached the cabin and started a fire under the cauldron, Kingsley seemed pensive.

"Kingsley, just tell me what the matter is," Andromeda said finally, at the end of an unusually quiet dinner at the cabin's small wooden table.

He swirled the wine in his glass and didn't answer right away. Andromeda, always impatient, was hard-pressed not to repeat her request. Finally he glanced up, gaze hooded, and said, "I wonder what I am to you."

"What do you mean?"

"Am I just some fool who follows you around? Which, Merlin help me, I'm willing to do to the ends of the Earth, and I'll keep doing it until one day you tell me not to, but do I even figure into the plans you make?"

"Of course you do."

"Do I really? Sometimes I can't tell with you."

"That's rather unfair," Andromeda said.

"I don't think it's unfair to ask…look, I'm not asking you to marry me or any such thing, I realise we've both been through that before. But I suppose I could do with just a bit of assurance that this means something to you, that you plan to stick around."

Andromeda set her own wine glass down on the table. "What exactly would you say I've been doing for the past three years, if not 'sticking around'?"

Kingsley shrugged helplessly. "Just putting up with me?"

Andromeda stared at him. "What would make you say such a thing?"

"It's so hard to tell with you, Andromeda! You hold so much back. How am I supposed to know if you enjoy my company, or are only tolerating it? I have to assume you're happy enough with our arrangement, since you've kept me around this long, but how can I know it if you never say so?"

"I tell you that you matter to me," she said, but even as she said it, she wondered if that was really the case. Did she truly act so unfeeling toward Kingsley?

And indeed he answered, "Do you?"

"I –" Andromeda noticed her hands were clenched tightly together on the tabletop and made herself release them. "I care about you very much. That's – I guess that's all I can say for now, and I don't know if it's enough. But I want you to know that. And I do think about you when I make plans. I suppose I've just grown too accustomed to being responsible for no one but myself and Teddy, after all these years."

"I understand that," Kingsley said.

"I'm sorry I'm not better at saying such things."

"It's all right," Kingsley said, and he smiled a little, so Andromeda figured she should accept he meant what he said.

She considered him, then pushed her glass away and said, "Come. Hear how strong the wind is? It must be wild outside. Let's walk on the beach."

Kingsley laughed in surprise. "Now?" he asked, but he followed Andromeda as she rose and crossed the room to take her cloak down from its peg next to the door.

The weather was indeed wild. They walked along the dark beach, the wind stinging their faces and whipping at Andromeda's hair. First she took his hand, then when they reached the darkest part of the beach, where not a single light was visible but the faint moon behind the clouds, she reached up and bent his face down to hers so she could kiss him, hoping the gesture could say some of the things she found so hard to put into words.

– – – – –

_(to be continued...)_


	8. Chapter 8

Returning to England after their holiday, Andromeda turned her attention once again to her newspaper column – a piece debunking myths about shapeshifters such as Metamorphmagi was particularly satisfying to write – and was enjoying herself so much, she barely blinked when Ginny said one day, "You ought to write a book, Andromeda. I have this feeling wizarding history would be a lot less boring if you wrote it."

Andromeda ran the idea past Kingsley, her usual sounding board, when he dropped by later for tea. "What do you think?" she asked.

"Isn't the real question, what do _you_ think?" he replied.

"I think I'd want to do it properly," Andromeda said as she poured their tea. "I'm not going to just republish columns I already wrote and call it a book. I would want to start fresh."

"Sounds like you've given it some thought."

"I suppose I have." She smiled. "Ted did always tell me I was so opinionated I ought to write a book."

"Clever man," Kingsley agreed, accepting a teacup from her hand.

"So what do you think?"

"About whether you're opinionated enough to fill a book?"

"Well, if that's how you want to put it!"

"Opinionated _and brave and thoughtful and intelligent_ enough to fill several books, in fact," Kingsley answered.

"Oh," Andromeda said. "Thank you." Then, on further thought, she added, "You know I love you too, Kingsley."

Kingsley stared at her, the tea in his hand forgotten. "I – You don't have to say that."

"But it's the truth."

Now he blinked at her. "I love you, too."

"I know."

That night, Andromeda sat down at her desk with a quill and the intention of jotting down a few ideas she might use for a book. When she looked up again, the hands of her old grandfather clock pointed at midnight and she had in front of her a complete outline for a modern history of wizarding culture.

You could have knocked her over with a feather quill.

"What have you decided?" Kingsley asked a few days later. "Are you going to write a book?"

"Yes," said Andromeda. "It appears I am."

– – – – –

"We hear Teddy's quite the heartbreaker," Bill said one evening that winter, when he and Fleur, and Andromeda and Kingsley, were at the Burrow for dinner. As soon as he'd uttered the words, Bill looked mortified. Fleur gave him a look across the table.

"Is that so?" Andromeda asked.

"Oh, I shouldn't have said that," Bill said. "What I mean is – No, I'm sure Victoire exaggerates quite a lot in her letters, actually."

Fleur made a tsk-ing noise and Andromeda had to suppress a smile, because Fleur sounded so much like Molly when she did that.

"All Bill means," Fleur said, "is that your Teddy is apparently quite popular with the girls, and he has had a few girlfriends. Perfectly normal for a boy his age."

"I really didn't mean to say anything," Bill mumbled.

"I shouldn't be surprised," Andromeda sighed. "He's like Nymphadora, then. There was never any shortage of boys interested in her, and she never seemed to know quite what to do about it. I never saw her take any of them seriously, until Remus."

Andromeda brought up the subject – the existence or nonexistence of girlfriends – with Teddy over Christmas break, and to her surprise he didn't try to dodge the question.

"I don't know, Gran," he sighed, slouching in his chair at the kitchen table and barely pausing in his vigorous attack on an enormous sandwich. "They just all kind of…throw themselves at me. I know I'm supposed to think it's really great and all, but mostly it's just weird. I'm not even a Quidditch star! Girls are supposed to like Quidditch stars!" He shrugged helplessly and turned his attention back to his sandwich.

"Take smaller bites, please, Teddy," Andromeda said. Once he'd safely swallowed and taken a next, more reasonably sized bite, she changed subjects. "I don't know if you've thought about it, but your birthday falls during the Easter holiday this year. Would you like to have a celebration here?"

"You don't have to do anything like that for me," Teddy said.

"I don't _have_ to, Teddy, but I'd be very happy to. It's your seventeenth."

"But just family, then," he said, looking uncomfortable. Teddy had always been shy about people making a fuss over him, though he wasn't particularly shy about anything else.

"Not any of your friends? The boys from school?"

"Yeah," Teddy conceded, "Ben and Zach maybe."

"And Alastor and Emmeline?"

"_Gran_."

Andromeda heard the barely suppressed roll of the eyes in the way he stretched the word into to two syllables. "Yes?"

"They're called Stor and Em."

"Yes, names which are short for –"

"It doesn't matter what they're short _for_. That's what everybody calls them."

"I can't imagine they mind –"

"Why don't you ever call people what they actually want to be called?" Teddy demanded, interrupting again.

Andromeda gave him a stern look. "Is there a problem here?"

"It just sounds really out of touch, is all."

"And why does that matter to you?"

"You should call people what they _want_ to be called."

"What is this really about? Would you rather be called by a different name as well?"

"What? _No_. I just think it sounds dumb, that's all."

"Teddy," she warned.

"Sorry," Teddy grumbled, but the atmosphere in the room had shifted unmistakeably. Teddy ate the rest of his snack in irritated silence, then slumped back up to his room.

"He's just so unpredictable," Andromeda said to Kingsley, the next time she saw him. "One moment he's the same sweet boy he's always been, then the next he's peeved by the slightest thing."

Kingsley chuckled.

"Oh, you may well laugh," Andromeda complained.

"He's a teenager, Andromeda."

"Does he talk to Alastor, perhaps? Or does he tell you anything?"

"No," Kingsley said. "Teddy doesn't tell me anything, because I'm an adult and he's a teenager. This is the natural order of the world."

"Dora didn't sulk this much," Andromeda fretted.

"Are you sure about that?"

"All right, I suppose sometimes."

"He's a teenager. Unless he starts setting his bedroom on fire or consorting with goblins, it's better just to let him be."

Andromeda raised an eyebrow. "Consorting with goblins?"

Kingsley, to her surprise, actually looked embarrassed. "It was…a teenaged phase."

– – – – –

_(to be continued...)_


	9. Chapter 9

Teddy's birthday dawned a perfect April day, unseasonably warm and not a cloud in the sky.

In the afternoon, Teddy helped Andromeda set up the tables for the dinner they would have later in the garden; Andromeda had Transfigured the garden furniture into a row of stately wooden dinner tables that really looked quite handsome standing there all together.

That morning Teddy had ceremonial toasted breakfast toast for both of them by magic, which they ate in honour of his official first legal magic away from Hogwarts, and Andromeda pretended not to know about all the incidental bits of magic he'd performed at home over the years, and they smiled at each other.

He had seemed quiet all day, not sad but pensive. Andromeda supposed he likely wouldn't mind, then, if she voiced a few of her own bittersweet recollections. No point in pretending they weren't both wishing his parents could have been here today.

"I'll never forget your mother's seventeenth birthday," Andromeda told him, as they arranged the place settings and the flowers. "She wanted an enormous party, and of course we gave in and let her invite as many people as she wanted. I suppose in a way it was the grand wedding party she never got to have."

Andromeda bit her lip as soon as she said that, because she disliked reminding Teddy of the rushed nature of Nymphadora and Remus' marriage.

Teddy was lost in thought, though, and didn't seem to notice. After a moment, he said, "I wish I knew what Dad's seventeenth was like too. There's nobody left who knew him then."

Andromeda was saved from having to find a response to this heart-breaking statement by the arrival of Harry and his family.

"Teddy!" Lily squealed as the family came around the side of the house, and managed to be the first to attach herself to Teddy's leg.

Teddy gently disentangled her, only to hoist a grinning Lily high in the air. Then he did the same for Albus, though he was really getting far too big.

James, as usual, was talking without seeming even to pause for breath. "So you can do magic at home, now, Teddy, huh? Can you show me? What have you done already? Can you Apparate? Did you learn at school? Have you got a license and everything? Teach me a spell, Teddy!"

Andromeda smiled and stepped to the side with Harry and Ginny, to allow Teddy time unimpeded with his fan club.

"How does it feel?" Ginny asked with a smile, as Harry went to put their present for Teddy down on one of the tables.

"Monstrously strange," Andromeda replied. "I'd only just got used to the idea that he's school-age, and here he is, almost in his last year."

Harry rejoined them and said to Andromeda in a low voice, "I'd almost decided to get him a watch, but then I realised you might want to be the one to do that. Was I right?"

Andromeda nodded. "There's one I've been saving for him all these years."

Harry's eyes widened. "You haven't got –?"

Andromeda only nodded again.

More guests started to arrive then, with Bill and Fleur and their children starting off a flood of Weasleys.

When Kingsley and his children arrived, Andromeda was occupied balancing two stacks of plates at wandpoint, but she saw Teddy head over to greet them, the perfect host.

"Thanks for coming, Mr Shacklebolt!" she heard him say.

"Happy birthday, Teddy," Kingsley said. "And really, call me Kingsley. Seems only right, especially today."

Teddy said something in response that she didn't catch and Kingsley's big laugh filled the garden, making Andromeda smile.

She went over to him as soon as her hands were free and he greeted her warmly.

"Hello," she said and kissed him on the cheek. "I hear it's been said already, but thank you for coming. You know how much it means to me."

"Wouldn't miss it for the world," he said.

They always saw a bit less of each other during the school holidays, both busy with their own families, and Andromeda realised now how much she had missed him. She squeezed his hand and he seemed to understand.

The garden was full nearly to bursting at this point with children running and laughing. Teddy had planned a few games he thought the younger ones might like and was organising them into teams now.

Knowing how Teddy hated having a fuss made over him in front of everyone, Andromeda waited for a quiet moment near the end of dinner to give him the watch.

"This was your father's," she said, seating herself in the chair to his left, currently vacated because James had finished his pudding and was chasing off after some creature he thought he'd spotted at the bottom of the garden.

Teddy stared at the object in her hand. She hadn't wrapped it. It hadn't seemed necessary and besides, she had other presents of her own to give Teddy later. This one wasn't from her.

"It was his father's before him, I believe, and Remus treasured it. He managed to hold onto it through everything. There's no question he would have wanted you to have it."

Teddy reached out an uncertain hand and Andromeda placed Remus' pocket watch in his palm. It was a plain and timeworn, but somehow possessed a quiet dignity that really only came with age.

It was true, Andromeda reflected as Teddy turned the watch over in his hand, it wasn't fair that there was no one left who could tell Teddy what his father had been like at his age. Andromeda cast around for memories of Remus as a teenager, the few times Sirius had brought him round, but the most she could seem to come up with was an image of sandy-coloured hair and an apologetic smile.

She wondered if Sirius had at least mentioned at the time what they'd done on Remus' 17th birthday, but she couldn't remember now. What she did remember was Sirius' own 17th. With the help of his friends, the boy had thrown himself the birthday bash to end all birthday bashes and made a point of inviting every Muggle-born acquaintance he could. But then, Sirius had never done things by half measures.

That gave Andromeda an idea, though. "I wasn't there for your father's 17th birthday," she told Teddy, "but knowing him and his friends, I think I can imagine what it was like. Shall I tell you what I picture?"

Teddy shrugged, but his posture said he was listening. Andromeda smoothed her hand just once over his bright hair and began, "Knowing Remus, he wouldn't have wanted anyone to make a big fuss over him." _Like you_, she thought. "His birthday was in March, so he and his friends would certainly have been at school then. And Remus would have told them not to go to any trouble on his account, but of course they would have ignored that, because they really were wonderful friends to him."

Teddy smiled and glanced across to where his friends Ben and Zach were chatting with Alastor and Victoire.

Andromeda continued, "So I picture Sirius pouncing on him first thing that morning, before he was even really awake. And James showering him with presents, because that's what James was like, always wanting to do everything he could for his friends."

"Harry's dad," Teddy said.

"Yes," she said, looking over at Harry, who was laughing at something with Ginny and Ron. "Harry is very much like his father. And like his mother, as well. I'm not sure how close Lily was to Remus at that point, when they were still at school, but she certainly would have remembered to wish him a happy birthday, because Lily never forgot things like that. And Peter as well, because as hard as it is for us to think that way now, in those days Peter was a good friend to them."

Teddy nodded. Andromeda knew talking about Peter Pettigrew didn't affect him deeply as it did her, but she would never find it in herself to forgive the man who had put Sirius in Azkaban.

"Then," she continued, "his friends would have made sure they had some sort of grand adventure planned for the day. I can imagine they might have snuck off to the Forbidden Forest together, though that wasn't allowed in their day any more than it is in yours."

Teddy chuckled appreciatively and Andromeda gave him a sharp look. "_No_, Gran," he sighed, "Before you ask, no, I don't sneak into the Forbidden Forest."

"I didn't think you did."

"You looked at me like you thought I did."

"Well, I certainly hope you don't."

"I don't!"

"All right, then."

There was another barely suppressed eye roll on Teddy's part.

"Shall I continue?" Andromeda asked.

"Yes, please."

"Well, I never met Remus' parents, unfortunately, because they passed on before Dora and Remus met. But I know they loved him very much, and I think they must have been extraordinary people. It wasn't easy getting him into Hogwarts; that took great perseverance on their part. I imagine they sent him their presents by post, making sure their owl arrived by breakfast on the day of his birthday."

"I like to picture them at Hogwarts," Teddy said suddenly. "Every now and then, I look over at the Gryffindor table and pretend Dad is there, or Mum is with the Hufflepuffs." He shrugged and gave an embarrassed laugh.

"There's nothing wrong with that," Andromeda said.

James came running up again then, to report back to Teddy on some Purlocks he seemed convinced he'd spotted just beyond the garden, and Andromeda stood up to cede the seat of honour next to Teddy. She watched as Teddy, grinning, leaned in to listen to James' chatter.

First, though, Andromeda saw him tuck his father's watch carefully into an inner pocket of his robe. She knew he would treasure it at least as closely as Remus had.

– – – – –

_(to be continued...)_

_– – – – –_

_Just a small note... Andromeda's little mention here of how Sirius "had thrown himself the birthday bash to end all birthday bashes and made a point of inviting every Muggle-born acquaintance he could" immediately got that episode unfolding in my head... and it turned into the short story "The Great Guest List."_


	10. Chapter 10

For the life of her, Andromeda couldn't understand why, once every generation or so, this push came to expand Aurors' powers. Did the wizarding community never learn from its mistakes?

It wasn't even wartime, when the impulse to give Dark wizard catchers carte blanche would at least be understandable, if still ill advised. Yet here they were again, with a minor string of incidents in the south of the country making everyone nervous and a proposal before the Wizengamot that would allow Aurors to make arrests on the basis of suspicion rather than evidence, then to send their suspects away to Azkaban until such time as the Aurors had collected enough evidence for a trial.

This time, though, Andromeda sat on the Wizengamot herself, rather than behind a desk in a windowless office as a lowly assistant scribbling away at minor bits of draft legislation that would likely never make their way into the final law.

On the other hand, it didn't make it any easier having to hear the insipid arguments in person.

Home from the latest round of deliberations, Andromeda found herself pacing back and forth through her house. Even after years of practice at keeping her temper, wilful obtuseness still always made her see red.

"Andromeda?"

Andromeda whirled toward the fireplace, in the sitting room where her restless steps had led her, to see Kingsley's concerned face in the grate.

"You seemed upset after the session today and I didn't get a chance to talk to you," he said. "May I come over?"

Andromeda bit back a sigh, because the last thing she wanted was to end up taking out her bad temper on Kingsley. But she said, "Yes, all right."

"I'm coming through," he said. His head disappeared for a moment, then the green flames flared and Kingsley stepped out of the fireplace, brushing a dusting of ash from his robes.

Andromeda gave him a rueful smile. "I may not be the best of company right now."

"And I was thinking that I wouldn't be able to sleep well until I knew what was bothering you," he countered. "It's fine."

"Tea?" she asked.

"Yes, please."

They took their teacups to the back patio, since the evenings were finally warm enough for sitting outside.

"The debate today over Gudgeon's proposed law upset you," Kingsley said, once they were settled.

"Yes."

"Why? I mean, beyond the obvious, which is that it's ill-conceived and won't actually make people any safer?"

"The Aurors who put my cousin in Azkaban didn't care much about whether he got a trial, either," Andromeda said, and understanding flared in Kingsley's eyes. "He spent twelve years in prison for a crime he didn't commit, not to mention the rest of his life on the run, all because no one bothered to back up the initial charges with hard evidence."

"Sirius was a good man," Kingsley said, but that wasn't Andromeda's point at all.

"Sirius was an _innocent_ man. This law is about putting possibly innocent people in prison until the justice system gets around to building a case against them."

"For what it's worth, I doubt the proposal will pass. There are enough cool heads on the Wizengamot to look at this reasonably. And I expect you're going to make a very convincing argument against it when you speak tomorrow."

"I hope so." Andromeda glanced over at Kingsley. "What happened to Sirius, you know, I don't hold that against Aurors as a whole. Many of the people I love most have been Aurors, as you know, and I have faith that most of the others, too, are honest and brave. But attempts to give _anyone_ unlimited power make me very nervous. And the blindness that allows people to think it's a good idea is frightening. Are we really so willing to forget the lessons of the past?"

In response, Kingsley asked, "Still working on that history book?"

She nodded. "I'm almost done with the first draft. Ackworth, my editor at the _Mirror_, has said he would be interested in publishing it."

"That's wonderful! Can I read it?"

"Now? The first draft?"

"Whatever draft you'll let me read," he said, eyes twinkling.

"Let me finish the last sections I'm working on now and I'll let you read it," she promised. "I daresay you'll learn a few things about me you never knew, as I can't seem to write about history without it becoming quite a personal history."

"I'll look forward to it," Kingsley said, and Andromeda knew that was true.

They sat in silence for a bit, then Andromeda said, "I tried, you know. Early on, during the First War, I tried to do it all the proper way, work for change, but do it within the Ministry. That's what Ted and I really believed, then, that prejudice was fought with laws, not vigilante groups. We knew Sirius was mixed up in something – we didn't know it was the Order, exactly – and we didn't approve. And where did that get me? I ended up so disillusioned with the Ministry that I simply gave up and left. And despite my cautious example, I raised a daughter who always ran toward danger instead of away. We were too idealistic, Ted and I. We really believed things would work out if we could just convince everyone to play by the rules."

Andromeda looked up to find Kingsley studying her. "And what do you believe now?" he asked.

"I suppose all I can say for sure is that I gave up too soon back then. I still believe it's worth working for change."

Kingsley set down his empty teacup and reached for her hand. "I'm glad you were willing to come back to the Ministry. The Wizengamot needs you."

"And I'm glad you joined the Wizengamot as well, after your second term ended. Not least because it means you're not out there on active Auror duty." She suppressed a shiver at that thought, caring for Kingsley as much as did and having to worry each evening that this might be the day he never came home from work.

He only smiled. "Are we counting our blessings now? I'm glad joining the Wizengamot led me to you."

She smiled back. "Now you're just being silly."

Kingsley raised her hand to his lips and pressed a kiss to her fingers.

He stayed over that night, so he was there when Andromeda started awake in the early hours of the morning from a nightmare.

"I'm here," Kingsley said, reaching for her even as she gasped and woke.

Andromeda struggled to sit up. "It's fine – just a dream –"

Kingsley reached for his wand and Conjured a glass, then murmured, "_Aguamenti_."

Andromeda drank gratefully. She hadn't had a nightmare like that in years.

The dreams had been frequent, in those first years after losing Ted and Nymphadora. Andromeda would dream something terrible had happened – Nymphadora injured on an Auror mission, Ted cornered by Bellatrix, Sirius' hot temper landing him in a duel he couldn't win – and wake to the relief that it was only a dream.

Then, after that split second of peace, she would remember the truth, that all of them were gone.

Kingsley leaned over and stroked her hair.

"I used to dream about terrible things happening to Nymphadora," she said. "But this time it was Teddy. Already I can't remember exactly… It was something about Metamorphmagi, I think. Oh, it was something stupid, they were rounding up Metamorphmagi and taking them to Azkaban – it didn't make sense even in the dream."

Kingsley's voice was a calming rumble. "You know no one will ever take Teddy away from you as long as I'm around."

"I told you it didn't make sense." She sighed and squeezed his arm. "But thank you for the sentiment. And sorry, I didn't mean to wake you."

"I don't mind," Kingsley answered easily, and Andromeda allowed herself to be pulled back into the comforting curve of his arm. She still found herself amazed at this comfort – a man in her bed, a partner. Even the physical size of Kingsley was reassuring. Ted had been like that too, a big, solid presence, something to hold onto.

In the morning, with the illogical fears of the night fled and Kingsley smiling at her over poached eggs, Andromeda felt strong enough to take on any number of ill-conceived Wizengamot laws.

– – – –

_(to be continued...)_


	11. Chapter 11

Teddy, when he came home that summer, seemed to sleep half the day and eat anything he could get his hands on. And while he laughed with his friends as easily as he ever had, Andromeda sensed a reserve in her grandson when he was around her.

She tried not to take it personally. He was a teenager, after all.

She tried to give him the space she knew he needed, allowed him to meet his friends whenever he liked and didn't ask what in Merlin's name he was reading at all hours of the night in the books he kept tucked away in his room.

The secretiveness should have been a sign, but Andromeda missed it. _As long as he's not setting his bedroom on fire or consorting with goblins_, she would think, smiling as she recalled Kingsley's words.

So she was blindsided when that illusion fell apart.

Teddy was down by the pond at the bottom of the garden one afternoon with Ben, a friend of his from Ravenclaw. Andromeda had started down the lawn to ask the boys if they'd like a snack, when she heard Ben say, "So, you're still planning to take the N.E.W.T.s you need for Auror training?"

"What did I say about _talking_ about it here," Teddy complained.

"You said you didn't want your Gran to know, but she's got to find out at some point, hasn't she?" Ben retorted.

Andromeda stopped short on the lawn, the warm afternoon suddenly turned cold. She didn't hear Teddy's response. Without any conscious thought, she turned and walked back to the house.

That evening, when Ben had gone home, Andromeda went upstairs and knocked at Teddy's bedroom door.

"Teddy?" she called. "May I come in?"

"Yeah, sure."

As Andromeda opened the door, Teddy looked up and hastily shoved the book he'd been reading under a pile of other books on his desk, then tapped his wand against a scroll that was spread out next to them, which neatly rolled itself up. It was so hard to fathom that he was seventeen already, of age and independent in his magic.

He looked up at her with a face that was innocent and expectant, and Andromeda didn't know whether to be furious or devastated.

She sat on the edge of his bed and he swivelled on his chair to face her, now looking puzzled.

"I heard you talking to Ben this afternoon," Andromeda said.

Teddy stiffened.

"What he said suggested to me that you're planning to try out for Auror training,"

Teddy's eyes darted guiltily to his books before meeting hers again.

"When we talked about this a year ago, I asked you to please reconsider," Andromeda pressed, trying to keep her voice level. "Since then, whenever I've asked you your thoughts about careers, you've led me to believe you were pursuing other ideas. In fact, I distinctly remember that at one point you said you were planning to pursue Healing."

Teddy was grimacing.

"Teddy, can it be you've been lying to my face for the past year?"

"Not all year!" Teddy protested, then clearly sensed this had been the wrong thing to say. "I mean – I mean – I didn't _mean_ to," he finished lamely.

"I have always let you make your own decisions and find your own path," Andromeda said. "I have never given you cause to doubt my faith in you or my love for you. I have only ever asked one thing of you, Teddy, and that is not to put yourself deliberately in harm's way. Why would you do the only thing I have ever asked you not to do?"

Teddy couldn't seem to find an answer.

"All right then: Why did you lie?"

"You didn't give me any choice!" Teddy burst out. "I told you what I want to do, and you said I couldn't, but what am I supposed to _do_? This is what I've always wanted, I don't want to do anything else!"

"Nothing else? With top marks and every possible career open to you, you choose _that_?"

Teddy's hair was turning a fiery red. "You talk about being an Auror like it's something so awful! I don't get it, Mum was an Auror, Harry's an Auror, and Uncle Ron, for Merlin's sake _Kingsley_ was an Auror, practically everybody we know is an Auror, and I'm the only one who's not allowed to? What kind of stupid – unfair –"

"It's not unfair, Teddy, when you're all that I have!"

"All that you have? That's stupid too, because what about Kingsley, and –"

Andromeda found herself standing, taut with rage. "You have no idea, young man. You have no idea what it is to lose a child. If you think anything could ever replace you –"

Teddy stood too, matching her. Taller than her, now. "Okay, fine, yeah, but you have no idea what it's like to – to be like me, to not have parents! Always this _thing_ there, this thing like I have to be careful what I say, be careful not to be too much like them, but not too little like them, and I have live up to them, and they were these perfect heroes, and they sacrificed everything for me so Merlin forbid I waste any of it because they _died_ for me, right?" Teddy was shaking. "When do I ever just get to be _me_?"

Andromeda stared at him. "I've never asked you to be anything but yourself."

Teddy looked like he was fighting back tears, but his words were abrasive. "I don't know who that is."

"Teddy, you are…yourself. You're kind and brave and loyal to the people around you –"

"I don't care about all that! I just want to be allowed to do what I want to do!"

"Teddy, please –"

"I don't want you telling me what to do!"

"Teddy –"

"No! I want to make my own choice, for once! I'm _not_ my mum and I'm _not _dumb enough to go and get myself _killed_!"

Andromeda gasped. She had never once heard Teddy be flippant about his mother's death.

But Teddy was still going. "You're so stuck in the past, it's embarrassing! Nobody else's parents are afraid to let them do things!"

"The fact remains that I am not anybody else's parents," Andromeda answered coldly. "And while you live under this roof you will follow my rules."

"I'm of age," Teddy said. "And I'll try out for Auror training if I want to. You can't stop me!"

Andromeda raised her wand. "_Accio_ Teddy's books." Books emerged from underneath piles of clothes and papers, zooming toward her from all corners of the room and landing in a neat stack in her hands. The one that landed on top, facing up at her, was a small booklet titled "The Pupil's Guide to Becoming an Auror."

"Hey!" Teddy shouted, but Andromeda Banished the books with another flick of her wand. Teddy turned towards her, incensed. "You can't do that! How dare you!"

Andromeda pressed her lips together and took a breath before she spoke. "I think you need some time to think this through. _Without_ your books at hand."

Teddy's chin jutted out defiantly. "Then I'll just go buy the same books again."

"Then I'll have to ground you for a few days, so you can think this over without distraction."

"Well then I'll LEAVE," Teddy shouted. "You can't make me stay!" He actually started toward the door.

"Stop right there," Andromeda said and before she even knew what she was doing, she had her wand pointed at him. It was something she had sworn she would never do.

Teddy stared at her in disbelief and Andromeda slowly lowered her arm.

"And?" he demanded. "What are you going to do to me? Are you going to hex me if I leave? Are you going to try to trap me in here? I can break out of any spell you cast on me," he declared, and Andromeda didn't doubt he could.

She dropped her wand to the floor, sickened with herself. "No, Teddy. I won't try to trap you or force you to do anything. All I can do is beg you not to do this. I'm too old for this, Teddy, too old to have to fear for your life every day. Please, don't make me do that."

The tremor Andromeda couldn't keep out of her voice seemed to scare Teddy more than her raised wand had. "Stop trying to guilt me," he whispered. "Just – stop –"

Trying to collect herself, Andromeda said, "I still think you'd make a wonderful Healer, but if that doesn't appeal to you, there are plenty of other, less dangerous jobs in the Ministry that involve prosecuting those who break laws."

"No!" Teddy said again, his voice harsh.

"I just think –"

"I don't care what you think!"

"I only want what's best for you."

"Ha, that's hilarious. You only want what's best for _you_."

Andromeda stared at him. "Theodore Remus Lupin," she said. "Everything I have ever done has been for you."

"You're an interfering old bat!" he shouted. "You're not even my mother, so where do you get off telling me what to do!"

For an instant, there was nothing but pure, shocked silence between them. Then something inside Andromeda snapped. "Get out," she said.

"I _will_," Teddy replied, pushing past her. She heard him thundering down the stairs.

Andromeda sank onto Teddy's bed and tried to get air back into her lungs. Had she just – no –

Teddy would be downstairs, she told herself, or banging his way angrily out to the garden. Andromeda pushed herself up from the bed, took a deep breath and walked downstairs.

Teddy wasn't in the house, so she checked the garden. Empty.

She went to the front door and looked out. The street was empty as well. Had he tried to Apparate? He'd only just got his license and if he was unfocused and angry…

Where would Teddy go? To one of his school friends? The Burrow? Harry's?

She closed the door and paced the small entryway. Should she start placing Floo calls? Or should she wait and see if he came back, before she started unnecessarily alarming everyone they knew?

Andromeda allowed her footsteps to lead her into the sitting room, then stopped in front of the fireplace, uncertain. Indecision was unlike her. But then, so was ordering her grandson out of the house.

She rested her hands against the marble mantelpiece. Yes, she should light the fire, in case Teddy tried to call from somewhere and didn't have enough Floo powder at his end. But her wand was still where she had dropped it on the floor of his bedroom upstairs. She would allow herself a moment to collect her thoughts before going up there again.

The photograph directly in front of her on the mantle was her favourite one of herself and Ted. It was a casual shot, the two of them squinting and blinking into the sun on the day of their leaving ceremony from Hogwarts, arms around each other. It was the first time she'd dared to be so open with Ted in public, because she knew then that by the end of the day she'd have broken her ties with her family and they'd be far past needing to hide.

"Ted," she murmured aloud, "Were we ever this difficult?"

She knew the answer to that. Of course they had been.

Andromeda sighed and told the picture, "I guess all we can do hope is he doesn't do anything truly crazy, like getting it into his head to follow tradition and run off with someone his family disapproves of."

Then she heard what she'd said and winced.

"Oh, I didn't mean that, Ted, you know I liked Remus in the end. And if it hadn't been for Remus, we'd never have had Teddy, any of us, so there that is."

Andromeda studied the pattern in the cool marble beneath her fingers and wondered what she should do.

She'd just turned to fetch her wand from upstairs, when a voice behind her said, "Andromeda?"

Andromeda spun and saw Ginny's head in the fireplace. Green flames had sprung to life, lit from Ginny's end. Andromeda dashed back and crouched in front of the fire, heedless of the protesting in her knees.

"Ginny," she said. "Is Teddy with you?"

Ginny nodded, an awkward motion within the flames. "He turned up here in a flap and I told him he could stay for the night, erm, and cool off a bit. I hope that's all right?"

"Yes, of course," Andromeda said, her mind finally allowing itself to picture all the dire scenarios she'd been trying not to think about, Teddy alone and splinched somewhere. She sank carefully to a sitting position in front of the fire.

"Harry's furious with him for what he said to you," Ginny said. "So am I. But we've always wanted Teddy to feel he had a home with us and that he could come here if he ever needed. So it seemed best to let him stay…"

"Yes," Andromeda said again. "Yes, of course."

"Harry will have a talk with him tomorrow," Ginny said. "But you know we're always here for you too, if you need us, right?"

Andromeda caught herself thinking, as she sometimes did, that Ginny was like the grown daughter Andromeda hadn't got much of a chance to have. Andromeda couldn't think how to express her relief beyond, "Thank you, Ginny."

"Any time," Ginny said. "I'll let you know when we're sending him back over, all right?"

"All right," Andromeda said. And because there was really nothing else to say, she said again, "Thank you."

Andromeda stayed seated on the floor a long time after Ginny had pulled her head from the fire and the flames had died down to a small play of red above the embers.

In her mind's eye she saw herself and her mother on that last, inevitable day. _I hate you_, Andromeda had screamed. _I hate you and I always will._ Then, before her mother could be the first to say, _Get out_, Andromeda had shouted, _I'm leaving and I'm never coming back._

Sirius had called her a sneaky Slytherin, later, and he was right. Where Sirius had left his parents' house in a hotheaded moment, Andromeda had been putting the pieces in place for months before she dared to finally speak her mind.

She'd been of age. She'd managed to slip most of her share of the family wealth out of their Gringotts vault without anyone noticing. She was finished with school, had an entry-level job lined up at the Ministry and she'd already signed a lease with Ted on a tiny London flat. It had been all over but the shouting.

But thinking about that now didn't do any good. Andromeda pushed herself up from the floor and went to fetch her wand. Then she did what she should have thought of from the first and Flooed Kingsley.

"Andromeda," he said, looking harried, when she stuck her head through the fire into his kitchen. "I'm just now having the no-really-I-do-mean-it-and-it-is-bedtime discussion, can it wait half an hour?" Then he leaned down to look at her more closely and said, "You're upset."

"Yes," she said, "but it can wait half an hour. Or until tomorrow, if you're busy with the children."

He shook his head. "Half an hour. I'll Floo over to you?"

Andromeda nodded. "Thank you."

She paced the house, then made a cup of tea, which she didn't drink.

She Summoned Teddy's books back from where she'd Banished them, but couldn't quite bring herself to put them back in his room, so she stored them in her own room instead.

By the time Kingsley stepped out of the fireplace, Andromeda's nerves were jangling far worse than they had done when Teddy had first slammed out of the house.

"I left the kids a note saying where to find me if they need anything," Kingsley said, starting across the room toward her. "Andromeda, what is it?"

"It's fine," she said. "Nothing's happened; I mean, no one is in danger. But I had a terrible row with Teddy." She hugged her arms to her chest in the middle of the sitting room. "I don't understand myself. I've spent seventeen years terrified of losing him and then I went and told him to leave."

"What? What's happened? Where is he?" She could see Kingsley shifting seamlessly into search mode.

"No, no," she hastened to reassure him. "He's fine. He's at the Potters'. I'm just shocked at myself."

"All right," Kingsley said. "Clearly there's a story here that I'm missing. Come, sit down and fill me in."

Andromeda allowed Kingsley to lead her to the settee, thinking a little wildly of how rarely she used this room, the sitting room, for anything but the Floo. Was it an unconscious protest against her parents, who'd conducted nearly their whole lives from the formality of their parlour? She and Teddy did most of their living in the kitchen or out in the garden. As had she and Ted and Nymphadora, in a previous life.

Kingsley reached out and placed a gentle, steadying hand on her arm. "What happened?"

Andromeda thought back to how this had begun. "I overheard Teddy talking with a friend today," she said. "It turns out he's been lying to me all this year – he still wants to be an Auror."

"Ah," Kingsley said, his expression oddly knowing.

"You knew?"

"No, no. Of course not. But I had a suspicion that, well – you can't stop a person wanting what they want."

"But he lied to me about it."

"And he shouldn't have done," Kingsley agreed. "But did you leave him any other choice?"

Andromeda stared at him. "Any other choice? Of course I did. I've always taught him to tell the truth."

"But at the same time, you made it clear to him that what he wanted and what you were willing to accept were incompatible."

"And that should have been the end of it."

Kingsley sighed. "Andromeda, I don't want to argue with you over this. I'm just suggesting that perhaps you should be the one to give way here."

"And let him go ahead with this, when everything in me screams out against it?"

"I don't know," he said, his gaze troubled. "I really don't know."

"You're right," she said. "He can't help wanting what he wants. But I can't help the fact that this terrifies me."

"You'll figure this out," Kingsley said, and the way he said it made it seem like a promise.


	12. Chapter 12

She would have been loath to admit it, but Andromeda spent most of the next morning waiting by the fireplace.

Finally, Ginny put her head through and said, "I told him I'd send him through by Floo, but he insisted on Apparating. He should be there in a moment."

"Thank you, Ginny," Andromeda said. "Thank you for being there for him."

Ginny shrugged, as best she could with her head in the fire. "Of course. He and Harry had a bit of a heart to heart, too, this morning."

Andromeda heard the soft click of the unlocking charm on the front door and said, "I hear him now."

"Good luck," Ginny said, her voice sympathetic. "We'll see you soon." She disappeared from the fire.

Andromeda straightened up and started toward the front door; Teddy was just coming in. They met halfway, in the doorway to the sitting room.

To his credit, Teddy didn't try to avoid her. There was a moment's hesitation, then he looked her in the eye and said, "I'm sorry for what I said."

"I'm sorry, too," Andromeda told him. "I didn't mean what I said, Teddy. This is your home and you are always welcome here."

Now Teddy did glance away, embarrassed. "Yeah, I know," he said. Then, "Can I go upstairs now?"

"Yes, of course."

Andromeda watched him retreat up the stairs and took a long breath.

The next morning over porridge, Teddy asked, "So, can I have my books back?"

Andromeda reminded herself to pause before replying, to remain calm and neutral. "Yes, but I'd like if we could have a conversation about this before you do."

Teddy huffed with annoyance. "What do we need to have a conversation about? Either I'm allowed to have them or I'm not."

"I'd just like for us both to sit down and have a rational talk about this. I'd like to know more about your plans." She added silently, _And whether you really understand what you're getting into._

"Oh, so now I have to defend myself to you?"

"You don't have to defend anything, but I want to be sure you understand what this entails."

"Oh, forget about it, forget about the books," Teddy snapped. He threw his spoon down into his bowl, pushed back his chair and stalked angrily away from the table.

Andromeda fought against instinct and decided this wasn't the time to remind Teddy of his table manners. She was going to have to pick her battles.

And so it continued through the summer: rows and spats with Teddy, sometimes over the smallest of things. It seemed all he did anymore was pick fights with her – and no matter how Andromeda tried to avoid the topics that would set him off, somehow she always managed to say the wrong thing.

She could swear Nymphadora had never been quite like this.

She gave Teddy back his books, of course she did, though not before the two of them had another unsatisfying conversation about his careers options. It was like trying to talk through a Silencio charm: Her words just didn't seem to get through. Even when Teddy nodded along, she knew he was only going to turn around and do the opposite of what she'd said.

Andromeda didn't realise how often she'd cancelled plans with Kingsley in order to deal with the Teddy Problem, as she'd come to think of it, until one day Kingsley asked, "Andromeda, are we ever going to have that dinner together? Or should I just stop asking?"

Andromeda looked at his face in her fire, his expression mild but eyes somehow accusing. She should have put him off in a placating way, but she was exhausted herself, more than half her attention on the ominous silence emanating from Teddy's room upstairs, which generally meant things were about to explode again – sometimes literally. So what she said instead was, "I've got my hands fairly full over here at the moment, if you hadn't noticed."

"In other words, I should stop asking."

"That's not what I said."

Kingsley sighed in a way that was unlike him. "Then what are you saying? Please spell it out clearly, because apparently I'm too dense to understand whatever subtext you've been communicating in lately."

"There is no subtext! I just haven't much time at the moment." There was a crash from upstairs. "Kingsley, I have to go."

"Will you call me when you have the time?"

"Yes, yes."

Kingsley's head disappeared from the fireplace, still looking dissatisfied, and Andromeda steeled herself to investigate upstairs.

– – – – –

Even when they did finally find time for a dinner together, Andromeda headed to Kingsley's house with her thoughts half elsewhere: Just beforehand, Teddy had slammed out of the house once again, brusquely informing her he was going to a friend's house and spending the night. At least this time he had told her where he was going. They'd had a terrific row about that after he'd again gone off somewhere without telling her, and now at least he knew that disappearing without a trace truly crossed the line.

She joined Kingsley in his kitchen – it was something she appreciated about Kingsley, that despite his far grander house, his family life too seemed to revolve around the cosiness of the kitchen – and Andromeda allowed herself a brief moment of envy: Kingsley's kitchen was warm and bright and happily cluttered, with Emmeline's drawings and experiments sprawled across the worktops and Alastor's Quidditch gear piled in one corner. Lately Andromeda's own kitchen felt like a warzone.

Apparently Andromeda was still talking about the Teddy Problem as they finished their dinner, because Kingsley said, "Do you think it might wise to give it a rest for a while? With Teddy, I mean. Just get off his case a bit?"

"I am not 'on his case'."

"Andromeda."

"He gives me cause to worry, all right?"

Kingsley sighed. "I know. The thing is, though, he's a teenager. They're always a little worrying."

Andromeda just frowned at him, because Alastor didn't behave the way Teddy did, so Kingsley didn't understand.

"You're still fighting him over becoming an Auror, aren't you?" Kingsley asked.

"No, I'm not."

"But you make very clear to him what you think."

"How can I not! Out of nowhere, he insists on doing the one thing I absolutely can't bear. I don't understand it. He never talked before about wanting to be an Auror. Not even with all the time he's spent around Harry and Ron."

"He's asked me about it, sometimes," Kingsley said.

"_What?_ And you never saw fit to mention that?"

"He didn't ask for advice on how to secretly become an Auror behind your back, if that's what you're thinking! But he's sometimes asked me what the work was like and I've always tried to answer him honestly. I tried to give him a sense of what Tonks' day-to-day life was like, and I told him for whom Stor is named when Teddy asked. He wants to understand his history and I don't think that's a bad thing. You don't either, when you're being honest with yourself, Andromeda."

"Understanding history is one thing, repeating it is another!"

"Nothing says history is going to repeat here."

"How exactly is this not history repeating?"

"Andromeda, Teddy is not Nymphadora. He's going to be fine."

"Don't patronise me," Andromeda snapped. "I know very well that Nymphadora is not here, thank you."

"What I mean is, just because you lost her, it doesn't mean you're going to lose him."

"That's not a chance I'm willing to take! I won't lose another child. And if you can't understand that, well, then I feel sorry for you."

A note of weariness in his voice, Kingsley said, "Being an Auror isn't actually a death sentence, you know."

"I have access to Ministry files, too," Andromeda retorted. "I've read the statistics."

"Those statistics were from wartime! And I'm sorry to put this so bluntly, but how many people also died in the war who _weren't_ Aurors? How many people died who weren't part of the Order or the Ministry, people who just happened to be in the wrong place at a time when the world was at war?"

"Your point?"

"My point is, let's say Teddy studies hard and gets the N.E.W.T.s he needs, he passes the entrance exam, goes through training, becomes an Auror. What are the chances, Andromeda, what are the absolute, statistical chances that that career path with _ever_ put him in anything resembling mortal danger? Do you know how many Aurors have been killed in the line of duty in all the years since the war? You say you've checked the statistics. How many?"

"One," she whispered, throat tightening at the mere thought of it. "That poor young man in Brighton."

"_Yes_." Kingsley leaned forward over the table, gaze intent on her. "One man in seventeen years. And it was horrible. I'll never forget that funeral. But, thank Merlin, thank all the powers that be, it's been only one in all these years. And horrible, unexpected things can happen to anyone, it's unfortunately just the way it is. It's not limited to Aurors."

"So you're telling me I have an irrational prejudice against Aurors. All right, fine: Yes, I do. Satisfied?"

"No!" Kingsley shoved his chair back from the table in frustration, then took a deep breath and pulled it closer in again. "No, look, what I'm saying is that it's time for you to let Teddy figure out his own way."

"What does it matter to you, Kingsley?" Andromeda demanded. "This is not your battle. What do you care what I do or don't allow Teddy?"

Kingsley was quiet for too long and when Andromeda looked up to meet his gaze, she saw hurt in his eyes.

"Really?" he asked. "Is that how you see it?"

"What do you mean?"

"Of course it matters to me! I care about you, and I care about Teddy, and I don't honestly know how much longer I can stand to watch the two of you tear each other apart. This is consuming you, Andromeda. I never even see you anymore."

"I've told you, if it seems I haven't had much time lately, it's because I have other things on my mind at the moment."

"_Yes_, which is exactly what I'm saying!"

"So you want me just not to think about Teddy? Not to worry about what he's doing?"

"No, Andromeda, obviously not. I'm just asking you to let up on him. Let it go, stop fighting against him." Andromeda was about to retort, but Kingsley added, "Please."

The pleading in his voice caught at her, and she answered much more mildly than she'd first intended, "It's not as easy as just saying, 'All right, I'll let it go.'"

"I know," Kingsley sighed. "I'm only asking you to try."

Kingsley really did look weary, Andromeda thought – weary, and perhaps also resigned to her never putting him first.

As if he could read her thoughts, he added, "This isn't only about me, though. As hard as it probably is to tell if you're the one inside the situation, I can see this is hurting Teddy, too. He really wants your approval, you know."

"That's a little hard to tell, when mostly what he does is shout that he doesn't care what I think."

"But it's true all the same."

"I believe you," Andromeda said. Wanting at least to try to meet Kingsley halfway, she added, "What would you do, in my situation? How would you go about trying to repair things with Teddy?"

Kingsley gave her a considering look, then said, "Talk to him as an adult. Tell him you want to support him and it's hard for you to do, but you're trying. You can go ahead and tell him that you're going to try not to fight him on his choices, but you can't promise always to succeed."

Andromeda sighed. Some part of her certainly knew Kingsley was right. A large part of her knew that, actually. "I'll try," she promised. "That's about all I can do, is try."

"That's all I'm asking," he said. "And for what it's worth, I'm a little sorry too that Teddy doesn't want, say, a nice, boring clerical job at the Ministry. But that's not who he is."

Andromeda tried to smile a little at that. "No, I can't really picture that." Then she sobered again. "I'll talk to him, Kingsley. I'll try."

– – – – –

When Andromeda returned home the next morning, she found Teddy already back from his friend's house and curled up, reading, in the big armchair in the sitting room. That chair had been a favourite haunt of his as a child, but Andromeda hadn't seen him sit in it for years. The sight made her want to go over and ruffle his hair as if he were still a small child. But she didn't.

He looked up warily when he heard her come in, Andromeda saw with sadness. Wariness wasn't what she wanted to see on Teddy's face when he looked at her.

Andromeda came over and leaned against the armchair opposite him, then realised she should put herself at the same level and sat instead.

"Teddy," she said, "there are a few things I'd like to say and I'd like for you to hear me through. I'm not going to criticise you, I just want you to understand how I feel. Can you promise me you'll listen?"

Teddy nodded and watched her obediently, one finger marking his spot in his book, but his shoulders stayed tense.

Andromeda sighed and searched for where to begin.

"I was so angry at your mother, for years, for getting herself killed," she said finally. "That isn't a nice thing, but there it is. I thought I'd finally truly forgiven her, but I suppose my work there isn't quite done. In the end, though, what I had to acknowledge was that I had taught her by my example, taught her with everything I did, that we have to stand up for what we believe in. Even if it means hurting the people you love.

"Your mother and father were fighters, and I don't only mean that they died in battle. I mean that they both fought all their lives for what they believed in. Nymphadora fought very hard to get Remus to accept her love, and Remus fought perhaps even harder to be able to meet her halfway.

"But they were also fighters because it was a time of war and because they cared too much to stand aside and let others do the work. If there's one thing I've always wanted for you, Teddy, it's that you wouldn't have to fight their war. But I can't be angry with you for standing up for what you believe. If I do that, you're absolutely within your rights to tell me I'm wrong."

Teddy nodded slowly, still wary.

"Just so we're clear," Andromeda said, "I'm not wild about the idea of you becoming an Auror, as I'm sure you've noticed. But if that's really what you want to do, we'll just have to manage somehow."

Teddy was quiet, looking thoughtful. Then he said, "Thanks, Gran."

Those two words, more than anything else he could have said, made the threat of tears prickle at Andromeda's eyes, but she blinked them back. For an instant, she wanted to grab Teddy and hug him to her as tightly as she could, but she didn't do that either.

Instead, she said, "I'll leave you to your reading," and settled for squeezing his shoulder as she stood and left the room.

– – – – –

_(to be continued...)_


	13. Chapter 13

It was not that the rest of the summer was always placid and easy, nor that there was never conflict. The night before Teddy left for Hogwarts, they came perilously close to another row, but managed to head it off with a tacit agreement just not to talk about it.

On Platform 9 ¾ the next morning, though, at the sight of her little boy leaving for his last year of school, Andromeda couldn't help hugging him fiercely. To her surprise, he hugged her back.

After the train's whistle had faded into the distance, Andromeda and Kingsley went for their traditional ice-cream together, both of them quiet that afternoon.

In the sudden emptiness of her home that autumn, Andromeda focused her attention on her book manuscript and had a final draft complete far sooner than she'd anticipated. She and her publisher set the publication date for that winter, and Hermione insisted on taking Andromeda out to lunch to celebrate.

"Look at me, starting a new career," Andromeda laughed. "I'm 62, Hermione!"

"I know," Hermione said earnestly. "But you don't look a day over 61, I swear."

The joke was so unexpected, coming from Hermione, that Andromeda burst out laughing again. "I have you and your friends to thank for keeping me young," she said. "And Teddy, of course. Though I think I also have him to thank for my grey hair."

"Well, I think it's wonderful you're doing something new," said Hermione. "It's…I don't know how to put it exactly, but it just seems like everyone is doing _well_ these days, you know?"

Andromeda did know. When she stopped and looked around herself, she saw her friends happy and busy with their lives and their work, and a country more or less at peace. No, all would never be perfect in the wizarding world. But Andromeda had never thought she'd live to see a world largely untroubled by the tensions that had torn apart her youth, and Dora's too. She wished Ted could have lived to see this, not least because it would have given him a good laugh.

But this was her world now, and Andromeda found she'd made her peace with it.

"Could you imagine growing old together?" Kingsley asked one night in their bed. As soon as the school year had started, they'd slipped easily back into the habit of spending most of their nights together.

Andromeda looked over at him and smiled. "Aren't we old together already?"

Kingsley laughed, that rumbling chuckle she loved so well because it seemed to well up from the deepest, truest part of him. "Oh, no, no," he said. "I'm only just getting started."

"Oh, well, in _that_ case," Andromeda said, smiling back at him, "all right."

The release of her book, "The More Things Stay the Same: Wizarding Culture Through the Centuries," didn't come until after Christmas, but Andromeda still gave a copy as a gift to each of the people who were the biggest influences in her life: one for Kingsley, one for Molly and Arthur, one for Harry and Ginny, one for Hermione and Ron, and of course one for Teddy, although she had to send his by post, in the trusty talons of Kingsley's enormous eagle owl, Royal, who consented to be loaned for the occasion.

For each of the others, Andromeda wrote a personal inscription inside the front cover, but for Teddy she simply signed, "Love always, Gran," beneath the words already printed on the dedication page:

_"This book is for my grandson, Teddy Lupin, as is the better world we've tried to build for him and his generation."_

Teddy's letters grew increasingly intermittent over the course of the school year, but Andromeda sensed he was simply busy, not angry with her, and let him have his space.

He wrote that he would be staying at Hogwarts over Easter to revise for exams, which was no surprise, but he still hadn't disclosed which N.E.W.T.s he was preparing for, so Andromeda finally wrote and asked.

Teddy's reply, clearly trying to sound casual, confirmed what she had expected. He planned to sit six exams: Defence Against the Dark Arts, Transfiguration, Charms, Potions, Care of Magical Creatures and, Andromeda was surprised to see, History of Magic.

In other words, fully enough to apply for the Auror programme even if he only passed five of the six.

Andromeda wrote back wishing him great success and held herself back from saying anything else.

After dinner at the Burrow one night, Andromeda helped Molly clear away the dishes as Kingsley and Arthur went to start a fire in the living room grate. Molly smiled fondly after them, then took a stack of plates from Andromeda's hands and asked, "When _are_ you going to marry that man, Andromeda?"

It was a rare thing, but Andromeda found herself rendered speechless.

"It's been long enough, hasn't it?" Molly continued. "He's proven he's going to stick around."

"For one thing, he hasn't asked," Andromeda murmured as she followed Molly toward the kitchen, glancing back at Kingsley's retreating back and hoping he wasn't overhearing this conversation.

Molly deposited the dishes in the basin and fetched pudding from the cold cupboard, then said, "You, of all people, I wouldn't expect to need to wait around for him to ask."

Kingsley said nothing when Andromeda returned to the living room, but his eyes sparkled at her mischievously as he stood to take the pudding from her hands and set it on an end table.

When they stepped out the door at the end of the evening to Apparate home, Kingsley murmured in Andromeda's ear, "So all this time, you've been just waiting for me to ask, have you?"

"No, I haven't," she said firmly. "I don't believe love must be validated by marriage. There was a time when I believed that, but not anymore."

"Ah, well, I suppose that answers that question," Kingsley said, leaving Andromeda blinking with surprise as he Disapparated ahead of her into the dark.

Teddy's correspondence dropped to nothing as he revised for, then sat, his exams.

The day Teddy would be coming home from Hogwarts for the last time, Andromeda woke with such a clear memory of standing in the spring sunshine with Ted on the day of the leaving ceremony, arms around each other and squinting toward a friend's camera, she almost felt she was there.

The Wizengamot wasn't in session that day and Andromeda found she couldn't concentrate on anything else. She ended up puttering around the house, cleaning the kitchen and readying Teddy's room for him.

From time to time she glanced at her watch – the one Ted had given her, later, because she'd thrown her 17th birthday watch at her mother's feet in a fit of pique the day she left home – so knew exactly when Teddy was on the lawn in the sunshine with his friends, listening to a few final words from his professors, and she knew when he waved a temporary goodbye to younger friends such as Alastor and Victoire, then followed the rest of the seventh years to the waiting boats that would ferry them back to Hogsmeade Station.

She thought of Teddy gliding across the lake in an enchanted boat in the sunlight, his whole life in front of him, and she was glad. Terrified, but glad.

When Kingsley came to collect her when it was time to meet the children at the station, she clung to him a moment longer than was really necessary, but he understood. They Apparated to King's Cross together.

Teddy bounded off the train, cheeks flushed, Junior Junior's cage dangling from one hand, and shouted, "Gran!" He ran at her and then, of all things, lifted her straight off her feet in an exuberant embrace.

"Teddy!" she gasped.

"Wait a mo', have to get my trunk!" he yelled, and was already back up the steps of the train, past Victoire Weasley, who was laughing at him good-naturedly.

Andromeda saw Emmeline throw herself into Kingsley's arms, then Alastor came off the train at a sedate pace, trying to look more dignified than his sister. Bill sent Andromeda a smile as Fleur swept first Victoire, then Dominique, into her arms.

_Next year, Harry and Ginny will be the ones here, _Andromeda thought, almost dizzy. _Then a couple years after that, Hermione and Ron. And Percy, and George…_

Then Teddy was back, talking a mile a minute, saying, "Steve – that's the older brother of this mate of Stor's – he's in a band and they're giving a concert at the Leaky Cauldron tonight, it's kind of in honour of the school leavers, you know, and it's _not_ like we'll be unsupervised, because Ben's parents are coming – you remember Ben – and I'll Apparate straight home afterward, or if you don't want me to Apparate – it's not that far, though – but if you don't want me to Apparate you can pick me up there after the concert if you _have_ to."

Andromeda hazarded a glance toward Kingsley, who appeared to be at the receiving end of a similar speech from Alastor.

"Teddy –" she'd just begun to say, when Victoire bounded up to them.

"Mum says I can go!" Victoire announced to Teddy, who didn't miss a beat in turning pleading eyes on Andromeda.

"Please, Gran? It starts at eight, it won't even go that late."

"Oh – I –"

Teddy and Victoire both watched her, breath bated.

"Oh, all right."

Teddy whooped.

"But you'll _Floo _home, Teddy, not Apparate. And you're to be back by midnight precisely, or I will indeed turn up at the Leaky Cauldron to mortify you in front of your friends."

"Thanks, Gran!" Teddy grinned, unfazed by threats of public embarrassment. If Andromeda squinted just the littlest bit, she really could almost believe he was still eleven years old, sweet and excitable. She couldn't help smiling back at him.

"Congratulations, dear," she whispered as she leaned in to give him the briefest of hugs, then straightened again. "Victoire? Can I count on you to keep him from getting into too much trouble?"

Victoire grinned. In looks she was very like her mother, with her blonde hair and striking features, but in her expressions, Victoire was pure Weasley. "Sure thing, Mrs Tonks."

Teddy pulled his watch – Remus' watch – from his robes and checked the time. "Ooh, we've got to hurry," he said. "I want to drop my stuff off at home first, is that all right?"

It seemed Teddy had only been home a few minutes before he was off again, stepping into the fireplace to meet Alastor so the two of them could Floo to the Leaky Cauldron together.

Not a minute later, Kingsley's head appeared in the spot Teddy had just vacated. "Well, good evening," he said with a smile. "Would you like some company over there?"

Andromeda, who'd just been tidying the Floo powder away, looked at him in surprise. "Aren't you staying home with Emmeline?"

"She's at the concert as well."

"In Diagon Alley? She's only fourteen!"

Kingsley raised an eyebrow and seemed to shrug his shoulders, though Andromeda couldn't see them through the fireplace, and she reminded herself that she and Kingsley were not the same kind of parent. "Yes, then," she said. "Come on through."

It was a lovely, mild evening. Andromeda opened a bottle of wine and they took their glasses out to the patio, where they watched the sun slowly sinking down behind the neighbours' trees. Andromeda remembered watching the sunset together on their holiday in Lithuania and reached over to squeeze Kingsley's hand.

They chatted about this and that as the last rays of light disappeared, then a lull fell between them and that was nice too. Andromeda had never been able to be silent with anyone so well as with Kingsley.

After a while, he turned to her and asked thoughtfully, "Andromeda, shall we get married?"

Andromeda didn't choke on her wine, but it was a near thing. "Is that a proposal?"

"No, it's a question. I'd like to know what you think."

Andromeda thought, and found there was hardly a question at all.

"Yes," she said. "I think we should."

She looked at Kingsley and his eyes twinkled back at her. "Oh? I thought you didn't believe in validating love with marriage?"

"I said it wasn't _necessary_. I didn't say it couldn't also be very nice."

Kingsley's gaze turned contemplative again. "I agree. It could be very nice."

– – – – –

_(to be continued...)_


	14. Chapter 14

As happy as the decision – this strange, surprising, yet somehow very right decision – with Kingsley made Andromeda, she found herself hesitating to tell Teddy. What would he think of it? Teddy had only ever known her as a widow, a grandmother.

As so often seemed to be the case with their most important conversations, she finally told him one day in the kitchen over breakfast.

"_Finally_," Teddy said, pausing for just a moment in cutting a bite of his fried egg. "Congratulations, Gran! I'm happy for you."

"Thank you," Andromeda said automatically. Then, "What do you mean by 'finally'?"

"I mean 'finally' by 'finally'," Teddy clarified unhelpfully, turning his attention back to his breakfast. "It's been years, hasn't it? Stor keeps trying to bet me you guys'd wait until all of us were done at Hogwarts, but I told him I didn't think you were too worried about that." He grinned across the table at her. "Hey, looks like I won!"

"You don't mind?" Andromeda asked him, just to be sure.

"Why would I mind?"

"I wouldn't want you to think this is some kind of replacement. Or it might be strange for you, since you're such good friends with Alastor –"

"With _Stor_," Teddy corrected reflexively. "Gran, I'm moving out soon anyway. And come on, don't pretend you and Kingsley don't basically live together all year when we're at school, we know you do."

"I just want to be sure you know that this doesn't in any way change the family we've always been."

Teddy looked at her as if she'd just said the most obvious thing in the world. "Of course it doesn't."

And to a boy who'd lost his parents before he'd even known them, but been raised by a whole village's worth of loving friends and relations, perhaps it was indeed the most obvious thing.

They set the wedding date for late August, before Alastor and Emmeline would be returning to school, which left just two months to plan the event. Andromeda had no particular problem with this – last time, after all, she'd simply eloped – but when she told Molly, Molly just looked at her, said, "Oh, honestly, Andromeda," then whipped out a quill and started making lists.

Harry, when Andromeda told him, offered his enthusiastic congratulations, with that look on his face that said something had gone exactly as he felt it should.

Ginny seconded his congratulations and gave Andromeda fierce hug.

Hermione, when Andromeda told her, squealed with delight and asked what she could do to help, so Andromeda directed her toward Molly, who already had a better grasp on the planning than Andromeda did.

"Where were you thinking of holding the ceremony?" asked Molly, who had taken to inviting Andromeda over for tea, then pouncing on her with more wedding-related questions.

"Oh, I don't know," Andromeda said. "At my place in the garden…or at Kingsley's…it's really all the same to me, as long as our friends are there."

"Have it here," Molly urged. "You know we wouldn't mind, and our garden is larger than both of yours combined."

"I couldn't impose on you that way!" Andromeda answered, surprised.

"Oh, but it wouldn't be an imposition!" Molly rejoined, getting a particular rapturous look in her eyes that Andromeda hadn't seen since the _last_ time Molly had planned a wedding. "Oh, we haven't had a good wedding in ages, not since George and Angelina's…" Molly continued, already far away. From that point on, there was really no stopping her.

Andromeda ran the idea by Kingsley, who liked it. Perhaps even more importantly, Emmeline and Alastor thought it was a great idea, since they both loved the garden at the Burrow and had played there often over the years. The Burrow, Andromeda reflected, was a bit of a second home to almost everyone she knew.

Teddy's N.E.W.T. results arrived sooner than expected, in mid-July. Andromeda was the only one home when the Hogwarts owl swooped in the window, dropped a very official-looking envelope on the kitchen table and swooped out again before Andromeda could even offer it a treat.

Andromeda stared at the envelope. Then very carefully, as if it were made of glass, perhaps, or Ashwinder eggs, she carried it upstairs and deposited it on Teddy's desk. Then there was nothing to do but wait until he came home from an afternoon of pick-up Quidditch with his school friends.

As she ran one hand along the edge of Teddy's desk, Andromeda reminded herself that there was still time, it wasn't all ending just yet. Teddy had until the end of August to submit his application for the Auror training programme. And surely he would live at home for the first few months in any case, until he could find a place of his own in London. This didn't have to mean everything changing.

When Teddy got home that evening, Andromeda was at her desk in a corner of the sitting room she'd gradually converted into an office. She was working on a column for the newspaper, though not without feeling slightly guilty for the other tasks she was neglecting: She'd promised Molly she would revise the wedding menu – and when, precisely, had this turned into an event that required a menu?

Andromeda looked up as Teddy leapt lightly from the fireplace. "Your N.E.W.T. results have arrived," she said.

Teddy's expression cycled from delight to panic and back again, as his hair shot from neutral brown to bright red. Andromeda hadn't seen an involuntary morph like that from him in years.

"Where's the letter?" he asked, his voice cracking slightly on the last word.

"Upstairs on your desk," Andromeda said. She had promised herself she would give him the space to open his letter alone.

But to her surprise, he was back downstairs in the space of a minute, the letter in his hand. He dropped into the armchair and gazed at it reverentially.

"After this," Teddy murmured, "I won't not know."

Andromeda turned in her seat and gave him her full attention. "You won't not know what, love?"

Teddy looked up at her. "Everything. When I open this, that's it, there's no going back. Either I got the marks I need to be an Auror, or – or not." His voice trembled a little on the word _Auror_ and he shook his head, annoyed with himself.

_So much for this not having to mean everything changes, _Andromeda thought. But all she said was, "Then I suppose you'd best just open it, hadn't you?"

Teddy nodded, swallowed, then slid one finger under the envelope's wide flap.

He worked the flap open and slid out a single sheet of paper in silence. Stared at the paper in silence. Then, still wordless, he held it out to Andromeda.

She reached across to him to take it and read:

_THEODORE REMUS LUPIN HAS ACHIEVED:_

_Care of Magical Creatures: O_

_Charms: E_

_Defence Against the Dark Arts: O_

_History of Magic: O_

_Potions: E_

_Transfiguration: O_

Andromeda looked up to find Teddy's gaze on her, intent and anxious to see what she would say.

"Oh, Teddy," Andromeda said. "I'm so proud of you. Your parents would be so very proud of you too."

She handed the letter back to him and he stared down at it again. "I have – I have an application to write," he said, the realisation just dawning. "I can write my application _now_." He looked up at Andromeda, wide-eyed.

"Yes, do that," she said. "And then tonight, a celebration here with everyone?"

"Yeah," said Teddy. "Yeah, _definitely_."

Over the next weeks, Andromeda found herself doing any number of things she would previously have thought unlikely.

She found herself giggling like a schoolgirl with Molly, as she tried on wedding dresses at Twilfit and Tattings.

She found herself sharing despairing looks with Kingsley across his kitchen table as they studied a guest list that seemed to keep growing. Andromeda had more than once caught herself wondering a bit crazily if perhaps it _was_ growing of its own accord, overnight when they weren't looking, and if so, if there was a counter-charm for that.

"Perhaps we could just elope after all?" she suggested and Kingsley smiled, but shook his head.

Andromeda found herself struggling to convince Molly that this was going to be a fairly large affair and _really_ it was not necessary for Molly to do all the food herself. Ultimately, they compromised on hiring caterers from a nice shop in Diagon Alley, but Molly baking the cake.

At the same time, Andromeda was still juggling Wizengamot sessions, writing her column for the _Mirror_ and looking after Teddy, not that Teddy needed much looking after these days. On top of all that, she was in negotiations with her editor over a possible second book.

At her desk late one night, having just completed her book proposal, Andromeda stopped and stared down at the name she had signed to it, _Andromeda Tonks_. It was the name she'd borne now for most of her life.

"I don't think I'll be taking your name," she told Kingsley the next day, as they shared a quick breakfast at a small café near the Ministry before the Wizengamot went into session for the day.

When Kingsley's deep laugh rumbled out, Andromeda realised she'd said it the way she had specifically to provoke that laugh.

"Do you think I ever expected you to?" he asked.

"Please don't misunderstand me," she said. "This is not about choosing Ted over you, or anything like that. I only took Ted's name in the first place so I wouldn't be a Black anymore, because at the time that seemed the most important thing. But at this point, I've been a Tonks nearly all my life. It's my professional name. And it was Nymphadora's name most of her life as well. I feel too old to change, Kingsley."

His smile at her was like the sun. "Then you ought to know, Andromeda Tonks, that I think you're wonderful just as you are."

– – – – –

Andromeda arrived home that evening feeling unusually calm, despite a mounting list of wedding-related tasks, all of which Molly had flagged as _"extremely urgent."_ How had August come so fast?

An hour or two later, she was at her desk, wrapped up in revising the catering order and thinking of nothing more significant than the relative merits of canapés, when Teddy walked into the sitting room and asked, "Are you really all right with this?"

For a confused moment Andromeda thought he was asking if she was all right with getting married, which seemed like a bit of a silly question given that it had been her decision in the first place.

Then she saw that Teddy had another official-looking letter in his hand. This one was not in an envelope, but rather was a very proper-looking scroll that bore a Ministry seal.

"Are you all right with this, Gran?" Teddy repeated, hovering halfway between the doorway and her desk.

"I can't be all right with it until I know what it is, now can I?" Andromeda asked, as she had done when he'd been a child and come to her guilty over something. "Shall I have a look?"

Teddy took a step closer and handed her the letter.

Andromeda unrolled it carefully and read that the Department of Magical Law Enforcement invited Theodore Lupin, on the basis of his strong application to the Auror Trainee Programme, to appear at the Ministry of Magic at 9 a.m. on September the 1st for an interview, to be followed by the first of a three-day series of character and aptitude tests, which, if successfully completed, would qualify him for entrance into the programme. Teddy watched her with anxious eyes as she read.

Andromeda took three slow, deep breaths and allowed her eyes to close for a moment.

She remembered Nymphadora's ecstatic face when she'd received this same letter, and her even greater joy when she'd been accepted into the programme. Andromeda remembered her own worry even then, and Ted's indulgent smile at their daughter.

She opened her eyes and handed the letter back to Teddy.

"Yes," she said. "I'm all right with it."

Teddy reached out and his hand closed carefully around the Ministry scroll. "But is it…I dunno, is it something you can be happy about?"

"I'm not happy about the idea of you being an Auror," Andromeda told him honestly. "But I'm happy for _you_ and that's what matters."

"Oh," Teddy said, then paused and seemed to ponder this more closely. "Oh. Okay."

– – – – –

_(to be continued...)_


	15. Chapter 15

Dear readers, here's the final chapter! Sorry for the delay in getting this one posted, and thanks so much if you've read along this far. Enjoy :-)

– – – – –

The morning of her second marriage, Andromeda stopped first at the cemetery. She'd told no one else where she was going, only Kingsley, who'd given her a kiss on the forehead and an understanding smile.

For a while she just stood and gazed silently Ted's gravestone. She didn't come here often. Ted lived on in her memory and in the home they'd shared, not here. She'd always felt silly talking out loud to a chunk of stone, but today she felt she had to try.

"My love," she started, then stilled the tremor in her voice and began again. "My love, I owe you so much. You made me the person I am. And I'm grateful to you every day for Dora, and for Teddy.

"It seems strange to stand here and tell you I'm ready to move on, especially since if I'm honest, I know I already have. It took me a long time to understand that that's exactly how you would have wanted it.

"I still wish you were here, if only so you could see that I'm happy again. I didn't think I would ever be able to say that, but I truly am.

"You've never really left me, Ted. I carry you with me every day."

She gazed a while longer at the simple grey stone: _Theodore Tonks, beloved husband and father, dear friend._

"I love you," she said. "You know I always will."

When Andromeda arrived back at the Burrow, Teddy dashed out the front door to meet her. He looked unbearably sweet in his dress robes and Andromeda had to swallow against a sudden lump in her throat.

"_There_ you are, Gran!" he exclaimed, as if she'd been gone for days and not half an hour. "We've been waiting for you!"

"I'm here, Teddy," Andromeda said with a smile. He grabbed her hand, fairly dragging her inside the house and to the living room, where Molly shooed him back out again and began fussing over Andromeda's hair. Ginny and Hermione popped in almost immediately, presumably alerted by Teddy, to help Andromeda into her dress.

"Thank you, girls," Andromeda said, though of course they were far from girls now. Ginny smiled and gave Andromeda a hug, then Hermione shyly did the same.

Molly swooped in again to give Andromeda's hairpins a last check, then she stepped back, cast a critical gaze over Andromeda from head to toe and gave a decisive nod.

"You're ready," Molly pronounced.

"Nervous?" Ginny asked.

Andromeda shook her head. "Should I be?"

Ginny grinned. "Not at all. In fact, I think half the women out there are jealous of you."

"Has everyone arrived?" Andromeda asked. "I'd like to take a look outside, if that's possible."

"Pop into the kitchen and look from the window there," Molly suggested. "But don't let anyone see you! I'll send Teddy to fetch you when everything's ready outside."

Andromeda smiled and squeezed her friend's hand, then went to the kitchen, moving carefully in the unfamiliar dress, to peer out the window to the garden.

It was a sunny day, perfect for a garden wedding, and large though the lawn behind the Burrow was, it looked full to bursting.

Andromeda had aimed for a small wedding, but of course that hadn't worked out at all. Eloping was indeed much easier in that regard, it turned out.

Many of their Wizengamot colleagues were there, as well as anyone who had worked closely with Kingsley during his ten years as Minister, along with every living member of the Order of the Phoenix. Then there was the not inconsiderable Weasley clan, and of course Harry and his family, and a number of Teddy's friends, and Alastor and Emmeline's friends.

Even Narcissa had come – Andromeda spotted her pale hair in one of the rows of chairs near the back. It seemed Andromeda was the only one who hadn't been surprised in the least when Narcissa wrote accepting the invitation. How could Narcissa pass up the opportunity to be seen at the wedding of a former Minister for Magic?

No, perhaps Andromeda was being uncharitable. Perhaps, too, there was space alongside Narcissa's self-centredness and pride for the realisation that they were the only two left of their family and that counted for something after all.

The irony of it all, of course, was that here, decades late, Andromeda was entering into just the sort of respectable, pure-blood marriage her parents had wanted for her. Smiling to herself, she thought, _Well, I suppose I'll just have to live with that._

At a noise behind her, Andromeda turned to see Teddy in the kitchen doorway.

"Gran," he said. "Ready? Everything's all set."

"I'm ready," she said and slipped her arm through Teddy's. "Everyone's seated? Molly and the girls?"

"All outside already," Teddy nodded. He looked excited, and so young.

Andromeda leaned in and kissed his cheek. "It means so much that you're here for me today, Teddy."

Teddy visibly suppressed an eye roll. "Right, Gran, because where else would I be today?"

"You know what I mean."

"Yeah," he said, suddenly bashful. "I'm – I'm really happy for you, Gran. Kingsley's cool, you know?"

"I know," she said and couldn't help smiling. "Ready?"

Teddy nodded and reached out to open the door to the garden. Andromeda cast another look over her friends, family and colleagues, then turned her attention to the man standing under a bower of leaves Arthur had constructed at the bottom of the garden. Kingsley looked uncharacteristically nervous, but quite characteristically handsome.

Teddy shifted his arm against Andromeda's, poised for the walk down into the garden. "Are _you_ ready, Gran?" he asked.

Andromeda turned to look at Teddy, then faced again toward the garden and Kingsley. "Yes," she said. "Yes, I am."

– – – – –

THE END

– – – – –

A last note:

If you've enjoyed reading about Andromeda here...

First of all, I'll shamelessly mention her appearances in my own stories! Andromeda is the focus of "**A Visit**," a minor player in "**Ginny, Harry, Teddy, Family**" and appears briefly at the end of "**Chambers**."

More importantly, though, I'd like to recommend other authors who have done wonderful things with this character. (It's not possible to post links here, unfortunately, but you should be able to find all of these stories by searching online for author name + story title!)

Stories about Andromeda:

Rosemaryandrue's "Rising Storm" stories (specifically, the "**Winter of Discontent**" series) influenced my ideas about a younger Andromeda and Ted, during the first war.

Chapter 32 of "**Cartographer's Craft**" by Sam Starbuck features a wonderful portrayal of Andromeda and Ted, when Tonks brings Remus home to dinner for the first time. Because Sam is masterful at everything he does, this too is fantastic. Includes one of my favorite lines: "The fact that Tonks was not only cheerful but also well-adjusted and non-conformist while at the same time working in law-enforcement was really much less shocking, after you met her parents." (You might want to skip the bits interspersed through the chapter of Harry/Sirius slash... nothing wrong with slash, but the pairing could be jarring out of context...! In this story, a teenaged version of Sirius is rescued out of the Marauders' Map after the adult Sirius dies, and he's thus Harry's age, so it makes more sense if you've read the whole story up to this point!)

"**The Hardest Part**" by such-heights – a young Andromeda on the cusp of making a decision between her family and Ted.

"**Dangerous Jobs for Girls**" by lazy_neutrino – Andromeda, Luna and Astoria Malfoy end up running the Quibbler together. Sounds crazy, is lovely!

And some stories about Teddy:

"**September when it comes**" by sundancekid – a lovely portrait of Teddy over the years.

"**Teddy Lupin and the Forest Guard**" (and sequels) by Fernwithy – delightful world-building for the next generation and Teddy's adventures at Hogwarts.

– – – – –

Thanks for reading!

starfishstar


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